Andrea Barrett demonstrates yet again how life tells its stories through aspiration, work, dreams, and disillusion of everyday people. She expertly listens and illuminates for us the inner journeys of a wide variety of sympathetic characters in her collection of stories, Natural History. It is a bravura performance from a well-loved and multi-awarded author.The stories feature a principal group of characters; Henrietta Atkins, born before the Civil War in what might be the Finger Lakes district...
October 17, 2022
"What You Can't Give Me" by RC Binstock
I feel like the china shop in the aftermath of a visit from a reckless bull. RC Binstock’s collection of short stories What You Can’t Give Me contains a series of punches to the gut, delivered to its characters and readers alike. Its current-day setting requires that it at least takes into account the unprecedented, polarizing convulsion of the COVID pandemic, which tends to plow people’s lives under, whether or not they fall ill.There is a sharp edge in the language in these pieces; they...
October 04, 2022
"Reading in the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene
Subtitle: The New Science of How We Read In 2009, French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene proposed in his book Reading in the Brain a hypothesis to describe brain activity in humans when they read. He calls it neuronal recycling, and it’s based on a few elementary facts.Writing systems and reading have been around for only about 5,000 years, much too short a timeframe for humans to evolve brain structures tailored specifically to reading. So, obviously, humans did not evolve reading...
October 02, 2022
"The Man Without Shelter" by Indrajit Garai
The Man Without Shelter follows the exploits of Arnault, a Frenchman released from wrongful imprisonment after 23 years’ incarceration. Early on, the story focuses on Arnault and his troubles, but as the narrative progresses the point of view shifts over to Lucy, an idealistic attorney who gets involved in Arnault’s legal dealings. She’s a character who wants to do the right and ethical thing, but really learns her high idealism from Arnault’s example.At story’s outset, Arnault is released from...
October 01, 2022
"Confluence" by Gemma Chilton
When the characters become real to us, we understand we’re reading effective fiction. When this realism leads to hoping for the best for this imaginary person, when their hopes become our hopes, the fiction we’re reading is now more than effective, it’s engaging. It bonds us, it recruits us in the service of its cast. The depth of our feeling for Liam, the young man wrestling with his memory—which is perhaps unreliable—of a pivotal traumatic event from his childhood, is the only yardstick...
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