Short Stories - Jul
No preamble. 18 stories read at odd times and places throughout this month where several of them were kind of let-downs. Twice, by coincidence, I felt like two different stories (Balzac/Faulkner and Ahmad/Capote) had similar overarching themes.
Let's recap:
La Grande Bretèche - Honoré de Balzac
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Ok first thing first: in the first half of this story, I couldn't help but joke that the language was extremely verbose and archaic. But the story redeems itself in the second half and has quite an ending. The protagonist is curious about the ruins of an abandoned manor in a town. He visits it regularly until one day the lawyer of the late owner of that manor finds and forbids him to pay any more visits. The protagonist wants all the details about the manor and its inhabitants and the rest of the story follows him finding it out.
One line summary: Don't lie.
Year Published: 1831
Recommend? Yes
Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story - Russell Banks
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It's about an unlikely affair between a young, handsome man and a much older, plainer woman. While there were some details that I didn't really like, it's the prose that really delivers in this one. Goes to show that a simple yet straightforward storyline can manage to hold your attention throughout.
One line summary: Sometimes men do cruel things under the guise of 'love'.
Year Published: 1984
Recommend? Yes
Bullet in the Brain - Tobias Wolff
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This is a story about an incident at the bank and the last moments before the demise of the protagonist. I've now read several stories that showcase how the main character behaves in the final moments before their time is up. Sadly this one I didn't like very much and the plot progression is as unremarkable as the protagonist.
One line summary: It's a robbery situation and the protagonist is a Fool.
Year Published: 1995
Recommend? No
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
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I liked the order of events that went down in this one even though I, being more of an optimist than a realist, was hoping for a different turn of events.
One line summary: Lemme tell you about this "distortion of reality" trick that psychology plays on you at times.
Year Published: 1890
Recommend? Yes
The Willow Walk - Sinclair Lewis
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Fun crime read about how a guilty conscience can sometimes be heavier than any punishment by the law. The protagonist is a young, small-town bank teller with a good social reputation. One day he disappears which generates speculation about his whereabouts. The search takes a serious turn when it is revealed that a couple of thousand dollars have also gone missing from the bank on the same day when the man disappeared.
One line summary: The weight of your sins will catch up with you.
Year Published: 1918
Recommend? Yes
Chauthi Ka Jora - Ismat Chughtai
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I explained in one of my earlier posts that I'm not really into sufferer-in-silence/ overbearing-mother-who-is-desperate-to-get-her-daughters-married-to-the-first-eligible-bachelor type novellas. I can empathize with the characters to an extent but that's where my patience ends and unfortunately this story was kinda in that territory.
One line summary: A widow has plans to make a young man marry his elder daughter but those plans do not come to fruition.
Year Published: 1946
Recommend? No
Akhri Aadmi - Intizaar Hussain
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This one is based on scriptural stories of a man named Al-Yasif who lives in a fishing village near the sea. Several people in the village were guilty of breaking the Sabbath and hunting for fish on a Saturday when God had forbade them to do so. Finally God punished them by turning them into monkeys. Al-Yasif was the last man in the village whose body had not disfigured yet but that incident made him particularly paranoid and grief-stricken for losing his family and the village folk.
The story is an allusion to how being deceitful while appearing lawful doesn't works before God and how the repercussions for such acts are dire and often unexpected.
One line summary: Everyone on this earth will have to pass through trials and those who transgress will reap what they sow, sometimes within the same life.
Year Published: 1967
Recommend? Yes
The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein
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Technically a poem rather than a story but a good one. I thought it was an allusion to parents and how parental love never wanes.
One line summary: It is a two-page poem, just read it!
Year Published: 1964
Recommend? Yes
Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl
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We have before us a scene where a pregnant woman is waiting for her husband to return from work. When he arrives, she starts fussing around him about trivialities while he is about to break some bad news to her. Once she internalizes the news, her behavior becomes erratic and the rest of the story follows her interactions with people in and around the house.
One line summary: If you've seen Gone Girl, this is kind of in the same vein.
Year Published: 1953
Recommend? Yes
The Screwfly Solution - Raccoona Sheldon
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The first half of this story was such a slog but I'm glad I powered through it. A strange social madness has swept the world causing men everywhere to kill women. An American cult in the state of Georgia justifies it by saying that man must get rid of his female "animal" part while European Catholics rationalize it by saying that "women are no way near defined as human" in the Bible. In between all this hullabaloo are a husband and wife exchanging letters with each other. The husband is a scientist stationed in Colombia and his wife is in the US.
Meanwhile a group of scientists conclude that some untraceable pathogen in the air is turning the otherwise normal male sexual impulse into violent ones. It's the kind of violence where men cannot switch aggression to sexual behavior but will destroy the thing triggering that impulse. What makes matters worse is that the guy returning from Colombia to see his wife and daughter realizes that he is also succumbing to that disease.
To put it bluntly, I find a situation where a character is struggling with love/desire for someone but is also convinced that they're not safe to be around that person to be very Hot. I won't spoil the rest of it but if you're into apocalyptic, world-is-doomed type scenario, you'll like this one.
One line summary: A mysterious pathogen has plagued men causing them to kill women around the world convinced that they are the scourge and need to be eliminated.
Year Published: 1977
Recommend? Yes
Gadarya - Ashfaq Ahmad
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Anyone who is even remotely familiar with Urdu novellas knows Ashfaq Ahmad and how much he is revered in the Urdu lit circle. His stories have a very warm, unpretentious tone and so I was really looking forward to reading this one.
'Gadarya' means 'the shepherd'. The story revolves around a boy living with his Sikh neighbor for a bit in pre-partition subcontinent. The protagonist has failed his secondary school exams and got in trouble with his dad because of it. Since the Sikh neighbor's son got the best grades in that year's exams, the protagonist's father asks him to tutor his son. It's a win-win for both sides since the Sikh man loves teaching and the boy is in need of a good mentor.
A key theme apart from the student/mentor relationship is a glimpse at the peaceful coexistence between people of different religions - Muslims and Sikhs in this case - in rural subcontinent. The protagonist is Muslim and his teacher is Sikh yet that hardly affects their friendship considering that he is practically living in his Sikh neighbor's house for a few months. The ending, however, is poignant as it takes place just before the partition in 1947.
One line summary: It's a boy recounting his friendship/mentorship relation with his tutor who helped him secure good grades in his retake of secondary school exams.
Year Published: 2001
Recommend? Yes
Babylon Revisited - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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I like Fitzgerald and how quotable he can be but this one was not it. The protagonist is visiting Paris in the 1930, immediately after the 1929 stock market crash. He is trying to reclaim his daughter over there who has been in protective custody of his sister-in-law due to his troubled alcohol and partying-heavy lifestyle from a few years ago. There's obvious nods to themes of alienation and guilt but I felt like the story didn't really go anywhere.
One line summary: You're a father trying to win custody of his daughter and start a new life after becoming sober.
Year Published: 1930
Recommend? No
The Door in the Wall - H.G. Wells
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I like the trope of mysterious-door-leading-to-somewhere-cool/horrific in movies (think Chronicles of Narnia / The Adjustment Bureau / The Matrix ) but while this story has that trope, I didn't enjoy it that much. Something about it felt escapist and alarming.
The protagonist, in early childhood, experiences a mysterious, green door that leads to a beautiful garden with happy people and him reading a book chronicling his life that stops at the exact moment where the book talks about him opening that mysterious door. Later in his life, he comes across the door a number of times but is never able to walk through it due to one reason or another and is now haunted by it.
One line summary: A man yearns to go back to the experience of walking through a mysterious door that will lead him to an enchanted world.
Year Published: 1906
Recommend? No
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
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Faulkner's story shares some macabre elements with Balzac's story that I talked about earlier in this post. Emily is a reclusive and strange Southern woman living in a house all by herself. The only other person seen around the house is her black butler who doesn't talk much. There's this air of mystery that surrounds her and her house until the day she dies. That is when the townsfolk find out what is hidden in the house.
One line summary: Hell yeah, southern gothic! which almost always means double the creep and double the anxiety.
Year Published: 1930
Recommend? Yes
A Christmas Memory - Truman Capote
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Beautiful story about a boy and the friendship he has with his much older cousin whom he calls as "my friend" throughout the story. The boy and his friend bake fruitcakes around every Christmas and give it away to friends they barely know. While not rich, the handmade presents they receive from each other are the protagonist's favorite.
I had a lot of nostalgia reading this because the boy's relationship with his friend reminded me of my late paternal grandfather with whom I was very close in my teens. I personally think, at least once in life, everyone should be close friends with one very old person. Old people are loving, full of wisdom, hilarious and nothing makes you feel as good as doing little acts of service for them.
One line summary: A boy and his old friend, lots of baking involved and coupled with a gentle emphasis on the meaning of friendship, loss and generosity.
Year Published: 1956
Recommend? Yes
Thirteen to Centaurus - J. G. Ballard
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This one explores the notion that interstellar flight might fail. The protagonist is a teenager living on a habitat called "The Station". He gets recurring nightmares, the meaning of which can only be explained by the station's doctor. The doctor explains to him that they are aboard a multigenerational starship and will never get to see the planet they are enroute to. In addition, the rest of the crew cannot know this or soon the weight of this information will make them unhappy and unwilling to continue on the mission.
But is the doctor really telling the truth or is this all an elaborate experiment? Ultimately the story highlights accounting for social and psychological problems that can arise from multigenerational space travel apart from purely mechanical ones. Despite the premise being very promising, I didn't enjoy reading it.
One line summary: Can humans adapt to a life in a multi-generational starship?
Year Published: 1962
Recommend? No
Mimsy Were the Borogoves - Lewis Padgett
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It happened: I came across a character with the most eccentric name: Unthahorsten. Once again I simply could not get into this story and it's a shame because I like reading about time travel :/ Supposedly the plot revolves around a posthuman scientist in a distant future trying to build a time machine and sending it as a box in the past. He sends two boxes, one to the mid 20th century and the other to late 19th century but both of the boxes fail to return and their machinery gets irreparably damaged by the travelling. Frustrated, the scientist gives up on his time machine endeavors but the story then charts who receives these boxes in the different timelines and how they interact with it.
One line summary: You are trying to communicate with the past bearing gifts from the future but are convinced that the experiment was a failure when in reality it created some unusual ripples in a different space-time.
Year Published: 1943
Recommend? No
To Build A Fire - Jack London
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What a great, Great story! A man decides to take a trip through a sub-zero boreal forest to visit some friends. He is accompanied by his dog and accidentally gets his feet soaked during the journey. Keep in mind that the temperature on that day is −75 °F/−59 °C. The title is a nod to his attempt to build a fire in an extremely harsh climate before continuing on his journey.
One line summary: Man versus nature
Year Published: 1908
Recommend? Yes
A Tad Perplexed
None of the sci-fi I read this month was captivating. Here's hoping that will change next time.
Regular reminder to friends and any secret admirers reading this, if you do read anything good and want to recommend, please by all means slide into my DMs on Twitter or shoot me an email.
See ya!