Juliet, thank you for this stunningly written, deeply heartbreaking story. I cried through it, although tears come easily this week for reasons we share. I'm as heartbroken as you at the "heinous genocide of its own." As painful and inexplicable as it is, I appreciate your speaking of it.
Few short stories pull me in. I try one every week in The New Yorker, and finish perhaps one in three. But this story of yours had me gripped, both heart and mind, before I’d finished the first paragraph. The story’s grace and power never let up.
The marriage portrayed feels both bizarre and deeply sad. We know from the start that it did not turn out well for the narrator—yet I kept rooting for her, hoping, almost believing that all would get better. Then along came this line about their love-making: “His face as he pistoned in and out of me was the greedy, self-absorbed face of a suckling baby, lost in sensation, lost in itself.”
This sad, loveless marriage has moved me more than anything I’ve read in weeks, in months.
Juliet, thank you for this stunningly written, deeply heartbreaking story. I cried through it, although tears come easily this week for reasons we share. I'm as heartbroken as you at the "heinous genocide of its own." As painful and inexplicable as it is, I appreciate your speaking of it.
This one will stay with me. A fierce little story that resonates long and far. Thank you!
Few short stories pull me in. I try one every week in The New Yorker, and finish perhaps one in three. But this story of yours had me gripped, both heart and mind, before I’d finished the first paragraph. The story’s grace and power never let up.
The marriage portrayed feels both bizarre and deeply sad. We know from the start that it did not turn out well for the narrator—yet I kept rooting for her, hoping, almost believing that all would get better. Then along came this line about their love-making: “His face as he pistoned in and out of me was the greedy, self-absorbed face of a suckling baby, lost in sensation, lost in itself.”
This sad, loveless marriage has moved me more than anything I’ve read in weeks, in months.
The narrator, Gyorgy, both completely convincing, and yet the story so much more than these two. This is just so good. Painful. Brilliant.
A very fine, moving story Juliet.
Well done! Captures the dire differences in marriage which can lead to isolation of each partner and result in separate emotional lives.