Well, an interesting combination of short stories this weekend, some worked better for me than others. No ghost stories but two from the December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine including a story by Joyce Carol Oates that is quite different from what I am used to by her. I'll start there as it was the longest and the closest to an actual crime-oriented story in keeping with my RIP-themed reading this month.
I've probably not read enough by Joyce Carol Oates to know what is typical for her writing, but "Equitorial", quite a long story coming in at just under 40 pages, on the surface anyway isn't the sort of story that has made me uncomfortable to read as in past experience. Sometimes reading her work can be enough to throw me a little off balance. "Equitorial" however, is filled with a sense of unease and paranoia. The story is essentially about a woman who has married an older and successful man who she believes is plotting to kill her. The telling of the story is interesting as it is mostly told by an omniscient narrator in third person but with dialogue interspersed which made me feel as though Audrey was telling me her story, too. That was a little disorienting as I began to wonder whether the narrator could be trusted or if it was a case of an unreliable narrator.
The story is set in Ecuador where Audrey and Henry are vacationing in the Galapagos Islands. He is a respected scientific researcher and his stamina and youthful appearance belies his nearly seventy years. Audrey is eighteen years younger and fell for him hard when she first met him. An heiress, her family worried the match was not entirely suitable as he had had two wives previously and each woman younger than the last. But Audrey has disregarded their concerns and married Henry anyway. The first flush of attraction has faded somewhat and now niggling at Audrey that a man so fit and strong, a man who can traverse with ease the rugged islands like men many years his junior, has lost interest in her.
He tried to convince her she was not up to the sort of vacation that the Galapagos Islands would require in terms of fitness and ability, but she wouldn't stay behind. And now he has shown her to be right--19,000 feet above sea level, Quito has floored her. She is ill and incapacitated. She can tell Henry is disappointed and annoyed and worse she begins questioning his motives and actions. Strange almost-accidents happen and she wonders if he has tired of her so soon and is ready to move on to a younger and more exciting woman.
What's interesting about this story, and JCO takes her time developing the setting, is how the story of Audrey's concerns that her husband is perhaps trying to kill her is juxtaposed against the harsh realities of the Galapagos. The more paranoid Audrey becomes the more enlightened the reader, and the vacationers too, become in terms of the dog-eat-dog world of the islands--survival of the fittest and the lack of intervention by the Ecuadorans in the natural environment is brought to the fore. Lack of intervention except in the desire to bring the islands back to their former conditions, which in this case means eradicating all wildlife that was introduced to the islands by previous explorers. It's all a little disquieting, which is exactly what I expect from JCO. In this story it is just packaged a little differently.
There is an intriguing little twist at the end and the reader is left wondering about Audrey's outcome. It was nicely done on JCO's part. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it as I was reading--less to do with the writing and plotting than just what sort of story I was in the mood to read.
For as long as the JCO story was, a story by Dutch-author René Appel was quite short so I decided to tack it on. "Red-Handed" is also in the same December issue. I had not heard of Appel before but he is apparently quite popular in Europe and has won a number of prizes for his writing. I can't quite tell if his work has been translated into English--other than some of his short stories. His books have, however, been translated into German. I really liked this story, though again it is not a typical crime story.
If there is a sense of paranoia in the Oates story, a fear of a spouse having an affair, in the Appel story, there's no question that illicit behavior is occurring. The story is so short but the twist so biting, that I hate to risk ruining anything for other readers by describing the plot in any detail. I will only say there is a satisfying sense of 'divine justice' going on at the end that I very much appreciated and was amused by. I'm going to keep an eye out for his other work.
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And now "Rosendale" by Paul La Farge which is the Sept. 29 New Yorker short story I read last week. I mentioned on Friday that I wasn't sure what I thought of it exactly. I'm still not sure. Sometimes stories just click nicely and sometimes they don't. It had lots of interesting ideas and I liked the structure, but ultimately I guess (and maybe this is the reader's/my own fault and not the writer's) it was not the sort of story I was in the mood to read. It begins:
"Dara lives in a ramshackle white house on top of a steep hill. She is a potter--she works at the ceramics center in town--but her house is full of books: some novels, many thin volumes of poetry, collections of essays on feminism and psychoanalysis, Hungarian cinema, Soviet Jewry, Australian aborigines, Kant, the Kabbalah. Worlds upon worlds."
That got my attention. I like the sound of Dara, but really the story is about April P who comes to live in Rosendale, to "start another life". A friend of Dara's puts the two women in touch and the two begin a friendship, though the story is less about exploring that than about exploring April P's life. What I like about the story is how the author interjects bits about Mary Shelley and company into the narrative--the two women decide to have a 'horror-story writing contest' in the vein of what Shelley did that ended up with Frankenstein. They ultimately give up on their attempts but Dara, a potter, has created this sculpture that sort of comes alive--a female Golem modelled on the Venus of Willendorf. This aspect of the story was quite intriguing for me, but what didn't work is April P's work as a stripper, her descent into drug use (yet another story following so quickly on the heel's of last week's story about a meth-user!) and how it all fits together. There is a lot going on and the ending was confusing but perhaps by then I maybe gave up a little? I'm off now to read the Q&A, which I hope sheds some light on things.
I'm only two stories behind now--next up is one by Kevin Canty, and then I finally get to try a work by Haruki Murakami. Lately short story reading always seems to be an adventure. Maybe I need to pull out a collection that is on more 'sure' ground? Not that I mind a good adventure of course!