A current Allegra Goodman NYer story that rings true to any parent

Smart and intentionally disturbing story, The FAQs, in current New Yorker, by Allegra Goodman - a story about a young woman landing back at NJ suburban home after 2nd year of college and boyfriend breakup and we watch her seeming gradual disintegration deeper into withdrawal and breakdown - obsession about eating and about conservation of resources, refusal to engage in any of her interests, withdrawal from social interaction, hours spent looking one at a time at photographs before deletion, denial to her parents that there's any problem, and so forth. Part of the beauty and success of this story is the careful balance of narrative POV - a detached, all-observant narrator focused on the family dynamics, which are credible yet astonishing: the father insisting that the daughter pull herself together and snap out of this, the mother in a deeper denial. There's no one to blame - tho the marriage is tense, it's not without familial love, and would have been so easy to make either or both parents the "villains" - and the story rings true to any parent, our deepest fear being a child in trouble and beyond reach, and the withdrawal of a child from all efforts and contact and support - a grotesque exaggeration of the process that all children must pass thru en route to becoming responsible adults. Reminds at times of a contemporary version, in miniature, of Roth's American Pastoral (w/out the radical politics of course). You will probably think you know where this story's going but you probably don't; I found the end surprising and appropriate - so unusual for a "realistic" contemporary story to provide a satisfactory and credible sense of an ending.

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