Another strong New Yorker story, this one from Zadie Smith

Keeping up an unusually strong run of stories in the New Yorker (and I didn't even post on Kristen Roupenian's amazing story, Cat Person, in recent NYer, but let me weigh in here joining w/ the man fans of that story) Zadie Smith has an excellent short story in the current double-issue, The Lazy River. (Maybe the run of strong stories has occurred because of a new focus on actual stories rather than excerpts from longer fiction; also, the mix of established and emerging writers is welcome and encouraging). Smith's story is on the surface about a family vacation in southern Spain in what seems to be an all-inclusive resort whose main feature is the eponymous river - anyone who's visited a water park will understand, its a lane in a pool where the water circulates through a closed loop so you can float along with the stream doing endless circuits. She is shrewd enough to make conscious note of the metaphoric aspect of the "river": families on vacation essentially going w/ the flow, carefree. But what makes the story so smart are the few hints of trouble around the peripheries; for ex., the family on the nightly walk to an ice-cream stand for the kids pass by some refugees from Africa, who get by working in the local greenhouses, busking for tossed change, or at a small stand where two African women braid young girls' hair (in various Afro styles). In fact, ZS notes that the family on a clear day can make out the coast of Africa on the horizon. There are also subtle references to Brexit - will it be as "carefree" in the future to make travel arrangements to Spain - and to the Trump administration across the sea. So we see these families floating by, each in its own style (some even attempting, unsuccessfully, to swim against the current for exercise), sheltered from the world that is snarling at the gates, and aware that their temporary place of respite is as artificial as the swimming-pool river. She doesn't pound home any of these points, but by the end of this seemingly placid how-we-spent-our-vacation story we fee troubled and unsettled.

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