https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/16/between-the-shadow-and-the-soul-fiction-lauren-groff
There is a lot to take in in this story. I listened to it first and then went back and read it, realizing how much I miss with listening. It's not a hearing issue because it comes right through my hearing aids. But rather a focus issue. I drift off and come back minutes later.
A woman retires at fifty from the post office. Her husband is still teaching and she veers close to a nervous breakdown. He helps her to find new activities. Eventually she takes up pottery, exercise, a class in growing plants. She has a flirtation with her Dutch greenhouse instructor that doesn't really go anywhere.
There was something unsatisfying about this story. It was too long for its subject and yet not long enough. There were too many characters, too many events for a short story. It probably would make a better novel. But Groff writes both so this might be its intended length. Sometimes it is hard to put your finger on why something doesn't work. In this case, I never understood the protagonist well enough.
7 comments:
Hmm...the premise sounds interesting. And I find it fascinating to think about the differences between the way we experience a story we read, and the way we experience one that we hear.
She reads it herself. It might make even more difference with another reader.
I agree with Margot, the premise does sound interesting. With all the stories I read, I can't remember offhand which of hers I read. We're in Arizona, so I only have this year's notebook on hand.
This week I read The Edinburgh Mystery, the anthology edited by Martin Edwards, and I 'm reading the one he edited set in Wales. The Scottish one includes stories by Michael Innes, Bill Knox (a nasty little tale), J.J. Connington, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson, Baroness Orczy, Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton.
I couldn't get online on the plane, so read - Jackie noticed that, sadly, we were almost the only people on the plane who were reading rather than watching their tablets or phones.
I read stories by two writers new to me - Diane Oliver, whose personal story is fascinating, and Joy Williams.
Although many people read books on their tablet. Especially people traveling since they're lighter than books and you can have hundreds available. Some friends I have read exclusively on a kinde. So let's pretend that was what they were doing.
That's what we did.
I can listen, engaged, to spoken word, as I've been doing so since childhood, but indeed it's usually easier for me to get more from a fictional text or anything too complex if I'm reading...unless I'm speed reading, which I usually only do with nonfiction, or a very dull piece of fiction that for some reason I want to finish. (Fritz Leiber's note that he always wants to read fiction slowly to get the poetic rhythm of the prose before him seemed familiar to me when I read it decades ago.) The voice in my head is definitely not necessarily the voice of a narrator, and some writers are atrocious readers.
Last year I read a short by Lauren Groff at the Atlantic ("Birdie"). I liked the story; it was pretty long and I read it twice and liked it both times but the experience was different the second time. My complaint was that I had a hard time reading her dialog.
Someday I need to listen to a story online instead of reading it.
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