7 stories from The New Yorker and 1 from The Paris Review. They're usually about 30 pages long.
- Carried away - 1917. Louisa, 25, lived in a hotel and worked as a librarian. While in a sanatorium (TB) she'd been in love with a doctor. Jack, away at war, started corresponding with her though he was engaged to Grace. He returns and marries his fiancee. Louisa loses her virginity to Jim, mid 50s, a rep who lives at the hotel.
Years pass. Arthur Doud, the boss of the piano factory, has to tell Grace that Jack's died in an accident at work. He returns Jack's books to the library. Louisa asks him what Jack looked like (she'd never seen him). He asks to marry her. She agrees.
Years pass. Arthur is 6 years dead. Jack, now a trade union speaker, recognises her and they talk.
The final 1 page section take us back to Louisa's arrival in the town, her wish for a new start. - A real life - In 1933 Millicent married a farmer 19 years older than her. Muriel (30+, piano teacher, single, goes out with many men) was her best friend - she's hoped for better but people were snobby. Dorrie and brother Albert rented a house from her. Albert died. Millicient has a party at her house, inviting her 2 friends and others along. Dorrie told a visitor from Australia about her trapping and hunting. Months later she surprises Millicent by saying that she and the visitor had been corresponding and he'd return to marry her. With wedding day approaching, Millicent visited Dorrie to find she had cold feet. Fear of sex? No, more fear of a new life, of leaving the place where she still missed Albert. Millicent lied that she'd already found new occupiers for the house.
Dorrie had a happy life with her rich husband in Australia, learning to fly. She died climbing a volcano. Muriel, spurred by the wedding, had gone off to find a husband. She married a widower with 2 young children, a strict Christian. Millicent, decades a widow, was happy that she'd made Dorrie go, and had kept Dorrie's house empty. - The Albanian virgin - during an adventurous holiday on horseback, Charlotte (Canadian) is injured and taken in by an Albanian village. Among them is a "Virgin" - a woman who wants to be treated like a man. The narrator talks to Charlotte when she's in a Canadian hospital. Sections alternate between Charlotte's narrative and the narrator's. Charlotte was kept for a year or so by the villagers, offered to a Muslim for a price, then exiled to a cottage when she's advised by a visiting churchman that she become a "Virgin". Later he helps her escape and she goes to Canada. The narrator was doing a degree, and married to Donald, an older doctor, when she had an affair with Nelson. She left town alone and opened a bookshop. She tried to stay in contact with Nelson and her husband (who now lived with his secretary). Charlotte was a customer who invited the narrator to their flat for a meal. Charlotte and her husband were poor, bohemian, booky. The narrator wanted to tell them her story - "to a person who would not be surprised or outraged by it. ... Had I taken on Donald as a father figure?". When the narrator finds out that Charlotte's in hospital, she visits. Charlotte disappears from the hospital with her husband, vacating their flat. As the narrator fantasises about a future she could have had with Nelson, he turns up at the bookshop. The ending's obscure.
- Open secrets - When Miss Johnson was a girl in an iron lung, Jesus appeared to her. When 60+ she took some girls on a trek. Heather never returned from the trek. Maureen's husband, a lawyer, is 71. At 69 he had a stroke. He'd given up sex when Maureen couldn't have children. Now he has sudden urges that embarrass Maureen. Mariam arrives one morning at their house asking whether she should report Mr Siddicup's odd behaviour to the police in case it related to Heather's disappearance. The lawyer goes to the police for them. Siddicup eventually ended up in a mental house.
- The Jack Randa hotel - Canada. Gail's baby died at 7 weeks. She went on to marry Will when he was middle aged and living with his mother Cleata, who drank. Will met a woman who was visiting from Australia, corresponded with her when she returned, and moved out with her. He's 56, she 28. Gail sells up and follows him. She assumes the identity of a cousin he's trying to contact. She senses he's not happy and they exchange letters. When she holding the hand of a dying neighbour she sees him. He guess who the cousin really is. She returns to Canada to see if he follows her.
- A wilderness station - 1852. Canada. An epistolary piece, a reverend interceding then dying. 2 orphans, brothers, start a farm. Simon gets a wife, Annie, from an orphanage then dies in a farm accident. George, his brother, says a bough falls on him. Annie runs away, wants to be sentenced for murder. She makes herself useful in prison. A doctor says that she has delusions to make her boring life interesting, to make herself important. Eventually George marries the neighbours' wife and they have 8 children, merging the farms. Annie starts writing from prison to Sadie (a friend from the orphanage) saying that Simon had axe wounds. The letters never arrive. Simon had been violent with her. She assumed that he'd been violent to George too, and George had finally lost his temper. She convinced him to lie. She was scared that George would kill her too, which is why she'd left the house.
A final letter dated 1959 written by an old woman gives info for a biographer (one of George's grandsons became a politician). Old Annie was the sewer employed by the letter writer's family. Old Annie once asked the letter-writer when she was young (and owned a car) to be driven somewhere. They met George. Old Annie talked to him while the young woman entertained the others with rides in her car. - Spaceships have landed - Rhea and Billy Doud (heir to a piano factory) used to go out with Wayne and Lucille. Sometimes they went to the Monk's to drink and play cards. Did Mrs Monk really take men upstairs during the games? Eunie lived 3 doors away. Rhea used to play with her. She disappears one night, the night Wayne gets Rhea drunk so that she pukes. Next day Eunie returned saying she'd been abducted by 3 children and taken to their vessel. Eunie became briefly famous. Rhea decides that Wayne is exciting and leaves with him suddenly. They have 5 lovers between them, and 3 children. Wayne becomes a TV presenter. She teaches EFL. Billy sells the failing firm, goes away to do good deeds, then returns to ask Eunie to marry him.
- Vandals - In a letter that Bea Doud doesn't send to Liza, she says that Ladner died while being operated on. She dreams about collecting her late partner Ladner's bones then wonder's whether they're Kenny's (Liza's brother who died at 15. After a lively early life, then widowhood, Bea calmed down by going out with Peter (whose wife is in a care home with MS). Then she met rough, raw Ladner, a taxidermist, and is excited. She moved in. Liza and Kenny (aged 6 and 7) lived nearby and had become regular visitors. Bea gave Liza money to get through college. While Ladner and Bea were away, awaiting his op, she asked Liza and her husband Warren to check if the house is ok. Liza trashes the place, making it look as if it's been vandalised, and phones from the house to tell Bea the bad news.
Some features and details recur. There are interlinking stories - set in Carstairs with the Douds. There are letters returned "Unknown", affairs conducted by mail between a Canadian and an Australian, ending with the Canadian going to Australia. Also
- We're given flash-forwards. There are big gaps in narrative time. There are several couples with big age gaps. The final section of a story often returns to an earlier time.
- Curiosity is raised then immediately dowsed. E.g. we're told rumors about Mrs Monk then we're immediately told "Later [Rhea] came to believe these rumors were false"
- We're given a summary of the rest of a character's life before they disappear from the story.
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