On "Matters of Breeding" by Douglas Light (1500 words) *****

Let's talk about crime. Let's talk about crime in fiction. Most of the time, crime is the focus. After all, crime is interesting. It's illegal. People get in trouble. There are high stakes. But that's what we expect. All of that is present in Light's "Matters of Breeding," but the bigger focus here is a marriage that is falling apart--oh, and the narrator's intense interest in trivia. It's the trivia, the banal, impersonal trivia, that makes this narrator seem like such a real and personal. Read the story here at Failbetter.