Stories from "The New Yorker" and "The Paris Review".
- One Sun Only - It starts with "This is not a rewrite of that story in which plants and animals and people keep winding up dead over the course of a school year, but it starts the same, and it feels odd not to acknowledge, so I will. I just did.". The male first person protagonist is a failed novelist who inherited from his wealthy art-loving father. This weekend he's looking after his kids Ernest (8) and Sally (11). In the past year they've suffered the death of his father, then their puppy, then the school janitor. He's separated from his wife Nikki. Sally had liked being taught art by his father. Ernest didn't, but was excellent at drawing circles. He drew his father's grave with a date 2 years hence. Sally was too happy for her father's taste - he felt being with her was like seeing an advert. He recalls years ago looking at a book from his father's library that analysed art done by children in war zones. Traumatized children never drew suns, but a painting with no suns was better than a painting with several. He wonders if his father made him draw daily not to make him into an artist but to see if he was still suffering from his mother's early death. When Ernest wakes with a nightmare, his father as usual gets him to draw it, then burn it. Ernest suggests to his father that he should do a picture too, of his father. [Lots of details that tidily, conveniently connect]
- Most Die Young - Julie, the first-person protagonist, writes articles about languages. On the day that she breaks up with Glauber, he says she'd be worshipped by the Pawong, a Malaysian tribe who fear attack but do nothing about it. She finds an expert at the Sorbonne, Prof Croze, who tells her that most of the tribe die before they're 38. She's 38. While in a cafe with sister Delphine (a vet), her old Latin lecturer Allan appears. Delphine thinks Julie fancies him and tells him how Julie loved the Romans as a girl, supporting them when reading Asterix and the Bible - all untrue. She'd met Gauber at Group, a group therapy meeting for people with (often quirky) anxieties. She attends a Group meeting. While there, bombs go off around Paris. The group's coping mechanisms kick in. Allan phones her. Croze sends her photos of the Pawong. Julie goes to her sister's workplace to see if she's ok. She's putting a dog to sleep. When Julie goes home, Glauber's waiting for her, concerned. They have sex. [When the narrator interrupts it's to say "Glauber is a name, in case you're wondering, and it was Glauber's name. I'm not just making it up for the sake of the story"]
- The Lottery in Almería - Andres (59) and Elena grew up in Paris to Spanish parents. After their parents died, Andres (who unlike his sister, still misses them) retired early to Spain, writing/updating text books on conversational Spanish. The "flirting" section needed frequent updating. Elena is divorced with a 36 y.o. daughter Sofia (who's frozen her eggs). She's staying with Andres during August. Andres buys lottery tickets from Rafa, who he didn't much like. Andres wonders how winning 87m euros would change his life. He doesn't win, though another of Rafa's customers does.
He types the first 3 lines of this story, then diverges. We get a page of the new version.
Then Elena says that Sofia's angry with her because she didn't tell Sofia she's had an operation. Sofia's having an affair with a married man. They go to see a dead dolphin on the beach. Elena wants to keep touching it. Then they hear that the lottery winner's being interviewed for TV at Rafa's. He's a happily engaged Erasmus student from France who hasn't bought a ticket before. - The State of Nature - The first-person female ophthalmologist has a patient who wants laser surgery so he can shoot better - he's a survivalist. She turns him down - his eyes aren't stable. She's burgled. Her mother tells her to go to the Flea Market with photos of the stolen items to meet her friend Rita, who'll look around for them. She and the police know the suspicious stalls, but if they were closed the goods would be sold online anyway. At least this way she might recover some items. She's worried that her cat will miss the TV. She keeps the radio on for her. Someone points out that if the cat can't see the faces, she might think the voices are in her head. The protagonist sees her patient at the market. He dashes off. She sees him at a jazz club - "One thing I know about jazz musicians is that they can never believe it when someone who's not a jazz musician talks to them". The patient apologies, saying that he went to another ophthalmologist and had the laser treatment done. Her father's been living in woods off-grid for 20 years. She realises, via a hint from Rita, that her mother's been raped. Going home from the jazz club she blows her whistle. She doesn't know why. No one comes to help.
- The Presentation on Egypt - Paul's job involves asking the next-of-kin of brain-dead patients for permission to turn life-support off. One night he hangs himself in his house's laundry room. His wife Anna discovers him in the morning. She takes their daughter Danielle, 9, to school. She's giving a presentation on pyramids that day. She's later told that her father had a heart attack. Anna never remarries. Danielle returns to her after every break-up. Anne worries that Danielle might have inherited suicidal tendencies. Danielle worries that she has congenital heart problems. Danielle wonders whether people interpret all problems the way that they would deal with problems at work. [The least good of the stories so far - several sub-themes but here they interact less well]
- Only Orange - Jeanne (first-person) is on holiday in Spain with her parents and brother. She had 2 nervous breakdowns in 4 years. Her ex is a celeb from reality shows. She's surprised when her brother Lino's girlfriend Audrey discovers at 26 that she's colourblind. Jeanne wonders if Audrey's faking it. Jeanne's envious that Audrey is adopted - "To be able to look at the people who love you the most and not have to worry that you'll turn out exactly like them must be amazing ... as an orphan, there were all these strings she could pull to induce sympathy, love and guilt". Weren't others suspicious about her status? "One thing I didn't understand was how my mother could've read so many novels and still take anything anyone ever said at face value". She discovers online some glasses that fix colourblindness, and orders them. She gets a phonecall to say that Marion (her daughter - a surprise. She's 12) has broken another kid's nose at holiday camp in Normandy. Jeanne collects her. She's sent a video showing Audrey's first moments with the glasses. Is Audrey faking her reaction? Chess, smoking, and Lino's art feature too.
- Beyond - Maisie is teaching yoga at a holiday camp for fat 11-15 year olds, Eugene, 13, being one of them and Alice another. His brother Max has given him a pile of letters, one to open each day, anticipating the future. It rains a lot. Eugene wants to be an actor. He and Alice rehearse a scene from The Sopranos for a talent show. Alice's period lingers. In the night an ambulance collects her - a ruptured cyst and she's fine, but the kids pretend she's dead and Eugene killed her. At the end "They will all be weighed tomorrow, like they were upon arrival. He assumes the camp counselors have bets running on which kid lost the most. He doubts anyone put their money on him"
- Chicago on the Seine - The first-person male narrator works in America's Paris embassy, repatriating people/bodies. When Eva Glasper dies, her daughter wants the body to be watched over until it could be flown back the next day, for fear the ghost will escape, offering $500. Whenever he crosses a river by bus, he thinks he sees Chicago's Whirlpool Building. The narrator visits the body - the mortician has just broken up and is tearful. After, he goes to an all-night cinema then follows an american family round the shops. When the father notices him, he pretends he's getting presents for his wife and daughter. He buys the man's suggestion then returns it when the family has moved on.
- Offside Constantly - Johanna's brother Thomas died young, 7 months ago, of cystic fibrosis, having wanted to own a Parisian art gallery. She has an undiagnosed problem - narcolepsy? She researches famous artists to see which illness has the most street cred. "I don't know what to do with a painting, how long I'm supposed to look at it. I prefer movies. Before I watch a movie, I check how long it will last". Why the title? Because "I started seeing death everywhere. It was like when you're taught what "offside" means in soccer: once you understand the rule, you see it nonstop". She tells a magazine's weekly obituarist that she's dying, that her only wish is that Thomas gets an obituary. She catches her schoolmate listing the people she's thought of being violent to. She suggests to her schoolmate that if she was really violent, maybe the fantasies will cease. She invites her schoolmates to punch her front teeth out (she doesn't like them anyway). She does. Johanna's in hospital for a month. [Fizzles out]
- Understanding the Science - 6 fortysomethings meet for the first time in a year - the first time since Maria's breast cancer diagnosis. Katherine has offered her help - piano lessons, etc. She has a celeb boyfriend, Adrian. He turns up by surprise. They start discussing conspiracy theories - how they start, who gains from them. Maybe "The hope is to discover that everyone has been lying to you ... Which then gives you an explanation as to why your life sucks". Adrian and Maria go out for a smoke (Maria had started smoking again as an excuse to take a break from people). She told him that Katherine thought actors could cope with thoughts of death because their younger selves were immortalised on film. He says he finds to hard to look at birds for too long - "They embody a form of regret: what the world could have been". Katherine and Adrian break up a week later, amicably. He's filming a scene where he's a physicist. He understands the science. He wonders whether in the lab film set the periodic table poster is a good idea.
- Graceless - The shortest piece. 10 pages. 2 sisters living in Paris (initially, precociously 7) visit their grandmother each summer. She's Catholic, but they don't know what that means, so they observe her behaviour. They go to dance lessons, feeling they have no natural grace. When their father's terminally ill, grandmother's not told until he's dead. Grandpa dies a year later. A sister goes to the States. She thinks that "faith is like grace, you either have it or you don't". The other stays home and becomes pregnant. Grandmother dies. They hope her belief helped her.
- Colorin Colorado - The first-person protagonist, 55, used to be a journalist. When she interviewed Loiseau, a famous chef, he'd suggested that she should write what her readers wanted to read. A few years later he killed himself. Now she's a novelist/teacher who cares about grammar and syntax. Her husband's an academic - art theory. She's interviewed about Addie, an ex-student who died the previous summer. Addie wrote crime stories. While a student she'd made YouTube videos of her stories where she played all the parts. She'd become famous. She hadn't found the protagonist's novels interesting - nothing happened. Addie had challenged her to write one with causes and effects. In return she'd write some pieces where nothing happened. The protagonist used 700 words of Addie's stories in one of her novels. When eventually she wrote a novel where things happened, it was her best-seller. It was partly based on her life - when she was 12 in France her mother died in an accident while with her lover; her humiliated father left for the States with her. An ex-student John contacts her, apologising her when he once said. He tried to kill himself and is trying to re-write his life. When she last met Addie, they talked about the tidiness of life and art. She'd forgotten about the 700 words she's sent the protagonist. The interview goes ok. One of the interview crew asks her where she gets her characters from. He says he recently met an old woman who'd been abducted by aliens. She wasn't asked about the 700 words. After, she bumps into a student of her husband who'd once shown her his novel about characters in paintings coming alive at night in a gallery. [Maybe my favourite. There's much about the interaction between Life and Novels - what should pass betweeen them and where they get their meaning from. "Colorin colorado" is what Mexicans say at the end of kids' stories - meaningless sounds that rhyme with "este cuento se ha acabado"]
I found all of these interesting and liked most of them. No mood music or evocative descriptions. Grief is often the reason for a re-evaluation of representation vs reality, the representations being paintings, novels or the choice of what to remember. A few pieces have details (often quirky) which didn't come together at the end, the way they did in other stories.
Other reviews
- janetmalcolmx (a story-by-story analysis, well worth reading) (The titular opening story is probably my favorite, and a good representation of Bordas’s concerns: strained familial relations, ambiguous pathologies, and difficult, willful personalities. ... there’s a lot of novelistic detail, asides, and digressions that are more poetic than schematic. Most of her stories deny obvious thematic paraphrase)
- Max Gray (The characters [] struggle to communicate in the wake of traumatic loss. They want to share their pain; they want to be seen; but they also surrender to isolation and nurse their wounds in private. These characters share a basic conflict in common — the question of whether to speak or remain silent, commune or disengage. ... These stories are, however, a bit busy, and it must be said that endings are not this author’s strong suit. ... Several stories screech to a stop at unpredictable moments, eschewing — almost defiantly — the cheap thrill of a neat ending.)
- bookmunch (The tales feature both families and friendship groups, and how little attention is paid by any to how individuals actually think and feel. Assumptions are made that emotions are shared when this is rarely the case. In conversations few are aware of how self-centred what they are saying is. ... A favourite in this collection would be ‘The Presentation on Egypt’.)
- J.R. Patterson (the finest story of this collection [is] "Colorín Colorado" ... There is an underlying ennui that marks most of [the characters] ... Anyone with a bit more zip usually comes off badly, as too needy, or too self-reliant)
