I have a friend who, every year on the Winter Solstice, posts something on his Facebook page about how every day will get better from here. He's also the one who keeps a countdown to the start of baseball spring training. He's never more optimistic than in the middle of winter. And that's "Solstice" by Anne Enright in a nutshell.
Ross is down. His family life is a little unfulfilling. He doesn't understand his daughter, who laughs at memes that don't make any sense to him (I hear ya, brother). His wife just doesn't seem to like him that much, even managing to seem "affronted" by him in her sleep. His mother has died in April of this year, a fact he is never quite able to get past. He feels unmoored and without allies. And today is the shortest day of the year.
There's never a direct mention of the political situation in the world, but it's also fairly clear that the darkness of this particular day, Winter Solstice 2016, is symbolic of the general darkness out there. "It felt like the end of things. Made you want your religion back. He looked out over the landscape of west Dublin, the square industrial units set among dark young trees, and he entertained the possibility that it would not work this time. This time, the world would spin deeper into shadow." I'd say that's a pretty clear indication we're supposed to see the darkest day of the year of 2016 as somehow linked to a greater darkness going on across the world. Other than that, although we get an oblique mention of the Dakota Pipeline, it's only there to show how little the father and daughter communicate, meaning the main subject of the story is going to remain off stage.
The story eventually grants Ross the optimism he is looking for. He has one of those quiet moments with his son that every parent eventually learns are about the best you can hope for. They are waiting together for the exact moment, 10:44 AM in Ireland where the story takes place, when the sun starts to move back to a more direct angle for those north of the equator. He is able to explain to his son--and to himself--that "No matter what happens, the sun will always rise in the morning, the planet's orbit will tilt them toward the light."
It's not a triumphant epiphany with fireworks and lightning. "...it happened. Nothing happened, but they know it was there. The tiny stretch of daylight that will become summer." It's a soft little move in the direction of hope, which is what the Winter Solstice is.
For liberal people, which is, let's be honest, the majority of people who will be reading an anthology of the year's best short stories, times seem dark. 2016 was a really dark year. But it will get better, even if we don't notice the moment in which things begin to improve.
There's not much more I've got to say about this sweet and short little meditation that ends the anthology. Sometimes, it's okay to allow yourself to be optimistic and believe, even if there is no real proof of it, that things are going to get better. Since late 2016, I'm not sure Western democracy has gotten better, but that's not really a reason to give up hope. The coldest weather of the year comes right after the sun actually starts to shine more directly on us and for a little bit longer each day. If you told someone who didn't know how the seasons worked on December 21st that the sun was about to turn around and things were going to get better, that person would spend the next three months mocking you for being wrong. But that person will still enjoy the spring when it comes, even if it means having to admit he was wrong.
I've now blogged through all three of the major best of literary anthologies with short stories the U.S. puts out every year, doing my best to think seriously about every story in them. It's taken me so long to do it that the autumnal equinox, the day after which our plunge into darkness becomes more pronounced, is nearly upon us, but here in the sunlight of early September on a holiday I won't think of that just yet.
How can anyone claim to have a message in world where the writer hardly matters and the reader or critic is the arbiter? I'm not surprised that writers are reticent about their intent in a literary that has loudly proclaimed that their intent doesn't matter. Of course, that's a stupid proposition unless you're a self-styled expositor who doesn't wish to play a supporting role to authorial intent, but instead hopes to supplant the author with his own riffs on the story: the author provides the grist for someone else's mill.
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