To put it a little more accurately, the reason I'm refraining from looking at it in depth isn't so much that I liked it as that I don't think the story presents any major obstacles to a lay reader that would impede understanding and enjoyment, so I don't have much of a role here. As a novella more than a short story, it's also a little bit difficult to treat it as I normally do. Because of its broader scale, individual words and phrases don't carry quite the same weight as they do in a short story. There's a really humorous section where Sybil, the main character, discusses the characters at the nursing home of the mother of her partner, Rachel. In a short story, all that good material would have had to be excised. Because meaning doesn't have to be hidden or encoded as in a briefer story, I think most of what a normal reader needs is right out in the open. So I can move on, which is good, because as I get near the end every year, I start to lose the gumption to do this.
I wouldn't want to tackle a collection of 20 best novellas every year, but I don't mind one being snuck in.
I am glad you still have the gumption to keep analyzing the short stories in BASS. You're analysis has proven very helpful to me over the years, and I am sure that's the case with many others who are not commenting.
ReplyDeleteThis story was haunting. I read it over a year ago and can still recall many details vividly. it has the completeness of a dream: bizarre but the details all belong and feel like they can't be removed. What made it work for me was the consistent characterization of the protagonist. She has this tinge of regret about some of her actions but does them anyway, often can't seem to help herself even if it makes everyone miserable, and that tension grabbed me. How many people have difficult family relationships and have the same fights over again. The surrealistic weirdness of this family kept it from being a run of the mill realistic fiction story (nothing wrong with those but they don't belong in this collection).
ReplyDeleteMy gripe about this story is that Sybil is quite cruel to her mother, and her mother doesn't get the empathy that the father does. Many times the cruelty is played for laughs. I'm posting this anonymously for so I can say that this hits different for me. My mom is an immigrant and has a serious mood disorder. She's also just a born eccentric. While she is very different from Sybil's mother, there's so many moments when she's alone in her feelings. She will get upset at things that bother nobody else, have dreams for her children that her children find silly, and we often end up reacting in ways that compound that isolation. And it was only as an adult that I understood how cruel that is when it comes from your own family, especially if you're someone who's made your family your entire life. I sometimes wonder who my mother could have been if we her family and her community had risen to the occasion of letting her be who she is.
This was a short story and not a novel, so not every opportunity for complexity can be explored. The actions of Sybil towards her mother make sense, but there are quick and subtle ways an author can withdraw endorsement from a first person narrator. Rachel could disapprove. Or the narrator could say one thing while the action says something else, leaving the reader to recognize the narrator's idea of her mother is not the entirety of who she is.