A rare story that encompasses an entire lifetime: A Transparent Woman

Hari Kunzru’s story in the current New Yorker, A Transparent Woman, accomplishes what few short stories do or even try to do: Telling the story of an entire lifetime, without feeling like a hasty summary or highlight reel. Kunzru – an author I know nothing about, but will look forward to reading more of his work – tells the story of a young woman living in East Germany before the fall of the wall and its way of life; it did take me a while to figure out the precise time and place, but we see pretty quickly that the young woman is deracinated, nearly homeless, working crappy jobs, trying to find some peace and means of expression in her life, and she gets drawn into (or willingly joins) a counterculture group and part of a three-woman punk-rock band (The Transparent Women) that becomes attains some success playing, first locally and then at venues around the country, at various head-banging concerts and anti-government scenes. It doesn’t take long before an agent in the Stasi begins following, then threatening her, and we watch in close-up how she is pressured to be a spy and how she is abused by the system – this may remind some of the movie The Lives of Others – and ultimately how her seeming collaboration colors and eventually ruins her life, both before and long after the reunification. I have no idea as to the authenticity of this story, but it feels credible and to his credit Kunzru focuses on his central character and her sorrowful and difficult interior life and not on the mechanisms and methods of the Stasi police. Kunzru’s one of those stories about which we think, for a moment, maybe this should be a novel – but then we realize, no it’s perfect as is.