Recipe for short fiction and a great name for a Russian writer and a correction re City on Fire

How could you not be drawn to the one-page story in current New Yorker, Aspic, by Russian writer Tatyana Tolstoya (pretty awesome name for a Russian writer, yes? Like maybe Hermione Melvilla or Ernestine Hemingwaya?). The story, simply, is about a Russian woman, mother of young children, cooking a beef aspic, apparently a traditional dish for New Year's Eve, and it's about her loathing of the entire process, from shopping (always a cold dark night in the most miserable time of year, the visit to the market, going back past what she amusingly calls the artillery of turnips and cauliflower and the signal lights of clementines to the meat section where the butcher, Igor, wields his axe), the creepy nature of buying cows' and pigs' feet (what if the pig tried to shake your hand), carrying the heavy load back to the apartment and struggling with the elevator (light always stolen, just the little red light on the panel, the slow ascent, creaking at every floor), then preparing the awful dish, boiling the beef parts as the gray scum rises to the surface – as if this scum is all of the fear and death locked into the flesh and bones of the animals who cannot escape the axe – she hears the cattle “mooing” – and on to the final preparation, leaving the cups of aspect out on the balcony, covered (in their coffins) as she smokes a cigarette and waits. For what? It’s a new year and should be a celebration of revival and a fresh start but this seems to be an immersion in death and fright. This story is straightforward as a recipe, step by step, but it’s also strange and disturbing, creates a mood and sense of time and place with precision and economy – a story without character development or plot or action to speak of but it’s a snapshot rather than a film clip.

A note on yesterday’s post: Yes, as pointed out, in City on Fire it’s Charlie’s father, not mother, who dies unexpectedly (I was also reminded of that as I read further, particularly into the long chapter in which Charlie sees an analyst at his mother’s insistence and, walking away from the therapy session, he wanders into a record shop where he meets, or re-meets, Sam(antha), who is the young woman shot in Central Park in the first part of the novel. It’s William whose mother dies at a young age and whose plutocrat father marries, bringing the mysterious brother-in-law Amory into the family. Sorry.