This edition was kind of all over the place in the quality of short stories but the good ones were just SO good. Of course now that I look over the list of those I liked, I realize that really there were only two or three I wasn't thrilled about and so many that were very good. The first story, Fair Seed-Time, poor American Richard bikes his way from Calais all the way to Denmark drunk with young love to see Allabella, a beautiful Jewish orphan of France's WWI Resistance movement. Allabella has been put under the custody of Mr. Jens, who sent Allabella abroad to England for school, where she meets Richard at Oxford. After the school term is over, Richard makes this grand plan to take a ship across the channel to Calais and see Allabella. When he arrives, Allabella is in bed, having fallen and hit her head by the sea. It turns out Richard hardly knew her at all and is stuck with his ruined expectations. It's a singular moment that is really illustrative of the entire process of growing up.
Julia and Sunny is the story of a couple who are going through a divorce. Through the lens of their rather shallow friends, we see the beginning and the end of Julia and Sunny's marriage and the hurt feelings of the friends who, having started as Julia's friends, were hoping to get Sunny in the divorce.
I'm still processing my thoughts on Tandem Ride, which features a young teen, Gneshel, placed with Rabbi Spitz's family by her poor parents. Gneshel has an opportunity to go to school for a reduced rate, where Spitz is the headmaster. However, Spitz has other designs for the "services" Gneshel can provide his family. In the story, we see a grown Gneshel struggle with feelings of guilt over eventually telling someone about her relationship with Rabbi Spitz, leading to his ouster and the destitution of his family, and her feelings of guilt over thinking she wanted to have a relationship with him and bore some of the blame for what happened. This kind of victim guilt is painful to read.
I loved The Candidate, which tells of a sandwich store worker who makes a late night chicken salad sandwich for presidential candidate Bill Clinton. It clearly has echos to the most recent election and was a smart well put together narrative.
Ten Thousand Knocks was a great story about an enforcer for a shady loan company. Kei's job is to make people pay up when they are behind on their rent. He questions his humanity and whether he can do the things he's being called on to do in the job, all while having a supremely clinical approach to the entire issue.
Thin Scenery. Okay so this is by Stephen King, so you know this is good. My favorite Stephen King works are all his short fiction. The man is a genius. The Body, Apt Pupil, Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption - these are all short stories! This man is amazing. I think he likely just has short story material wandering around in his head at any given moment. Anyway, Thin Scenery is a play within a play where one of the characters knows it is a play and is tormented by the fakeness of his life and everything he sees. Some of the characters are also aware of the "4th Wall" while others aren't. The overall effect is extremely creepy and wonderful. All hail Stephen King.
Jollof Rice and Revolutions was a great story about a group of girls at a boarding school in Nigeria. When they set out to oppose the principal for nefarious deeds, they stage a riot and the result is more devastating than they planned. The interaction between the girls, and the various ways their class and pedigree play into the reaction to the riot is well done.
Other Mentions:
Also creepy was Spectral Evidence. A story of a medium who feels like a fraud, but is harboring a terrible truth. Midnight Drives is a sad little story about a teen coping with the loss of his brother and its effects on his friends and family shown through the deterioration of the brother's car.
4/5 Stars.
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