David Means’ The Secret Goldfish (p. 288) is a tricky little story that can be read as a view into a family relationship, but with the metaphorical story within it of the resistance of the family goldfish to its environment and its struggle to survive. As the family unit breaks down, it is coincidental that the family pet is neglected to the point of being miraculously able to overcome the murky water caused by overfeeding and abandonment. The wife remembers her own goldfish as a child, which was released into a stream and freedom. Very interesting use of a simple, common neglected pet motif to illustrate human relationships.
The Cousins by Joyce Carol Oates (p. 298) is a linear narrative told in letters between a lonely elderly woman (Rebecca) in a retirement home in Florida and her reaching out to a cousin she has found to be an author of a controversial book on her Jewish roots (Freyda) who is resistive to the communication. Freyda slowly warms to Rebecca, as each woman seeks something within the other to better understand their own lives. Not awe-inspiring, but well done in its showing of the secrets we bear, the secrets we share, and our views of ourselves.
I totally enjoyed David Bezmozgis’s Natasha (p. 318). Written in first person pov, it is the story of a horny teenage boy whose uncle marries a Russian woman with a sexually active, street-smart fourteen year-old daughter, Natasha. The typical scenario with the two forming a friendship and sexual relationship is unrolled, but the conflicts that arise in the marriage and the subsequent boy-girl relationship being discovered and Natasha’s running away ties in wonderfully well with the boy’s secret life of buying drugs from a friend and a betrayal. It’s a well written unraveling of action and character, and the understanding of a boy’s glimpse into life.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology