On "Emergency" by Denis Johnson (3569 words) *****

Georgie, the narrator's friends in this piece, is one of those characters that sticks in one's head. He's a drughead who seems only semiconscious of things going on around him but who somehow manages to make good repeatedly--not necessarily out of some sense of love or goodness, just out of sheer luck. He stands in contrast to the narrator, who tends to think of his life as falling apart, of himself as one who constantly messes things up for others. I was curious to know how Georgie would be portrayed in the film version, and I wasn't disappointed, though in some ways, that portrait now sticks in my head more than the one that was in my mind before. Georgie was a bit more subdued in my mind, whereas now he is always over the top. The story can be read here at Narrative Magazine.

On "Between Here and Here" by Amy Bloom (5725 words) ****

All right, here's one of those grody, sentimental stories about taking care of a dying parent--only it's not grody or sentimental, and that's why it's great. The story's opening sets its town: "I had always planned to kill my father." This is a dad who is mostly unsympathetic. He's a jerk--making fun of his own kids, tossing his wife's cooking on the floor. When he's left alone late in life, he doesn't seem much to care--his wife dead, his children not wanting to spend time with him. But somehow, we learn to love the guy, even as the children do, as we see him age to a point of vulnerability. Unlike most stories where the senile grow ugly, this man's senility reveals a new gentler person, one we're sad to see fading so quickly. Read the story here at Narrative Magazine.

On "Conversations You Have at Twenty" by Maud Newton (5665 words) ***

There's a moment in Newton's apparently autobiographical story (if the word "Memoir" is to be believed) where she notes that "it's one of those conversations you have at twenty." That sort of conversation is one where a man you barely know enters your room in the middle of the night and talks to you while you're half dressed until dawn. I have never had a woman do that to me, and perhaps that's where my own lack of success in that domain springs from. I do remember, one night, late, chatting with a woman eleven years my junior online--this was almost a decade ago--and she noted a similar experience to Newton's. In Newton's case, it led to her having a pretty unhealthy relationship (one of a string apparently); in the chatter's case, it was taken as being very rude and led nowhere.

The closest I've come to the kind of oddball situation like Newton's would have been when I was about eighteen. A girl, a friend of my sister's, who came to live with us with her mom after her mom's divorce, ran into my bedroom early in the morning and laid herself atop me (we were both fully clothed). Was I turned on? You betcha--and really uncomfortable. My mom walked in on us but didn't say anything, which seemed odd as well. Was it a dream? Am I imagining this? Maybe so, though I doubt it. I mean, she was wearing red sweatpants. It can't be a dream.

Newton's story doesn't come across as a dream either, unless it's a bad one. She's coming from a place very different from my own very conservative life, and for that I appreciate the honesty and freshness. Read the story here at Narrative Magazine. (Log-in required--but it's free!)

On "All the Way Rider" by Mattox Roesch (5168 words) ***

I'm a sucker for stories about my hometown, I guess, when they're well written. Only, this one isn't so much about my hometown as about leaving my hometown for another, elegantly drawn place that I can say with some certainty I would never want to live in. I've been to Alaska. It's beautiful in places, but it's also dreadfully stark in certain ways as well. If you like being around no one, it might be the place for you. To me, though, there's no joy in roads that go nowhere. That's perhaps my favorite detail in this story. It seems like a metaphor for so much of what else is happening to the characters in this piece. Call it stark? A bit depressing? You betcha. Read the story here at Narrative. (Login required, but it's free!).

On "Where's the Beauty, Jimmy?" by Holly Wilson (824 words) ***

Think sexy. Think art. Think trying to do both together. Think being obsessed with the latter. Think really not being obsessed with either. Think, Is this really the best way to think about this? Think about being original. Think about food. Think about children. Let your thoughts take you where they will. Act on them--act on each one of them, as they arise. Always act. Think funny story. Think I need to read a funny story while I think these things. Think that. Think I will read this story here and now, while I think these things and be sexy. Read. Here. Narrative. (Log-in required, but it's free!)

On "Pretty Parts" by Hannah Pittard (1464 words) ***

My sister has this one weird thumb. It's normal length, but it looks like a dwarf thumb in some way. I'm not sure exactly why. Perhaps the last segment, following the knuckle, is shorter than usual. That would be my bet. But I haven't seen my sister's thumbs in years. I don't even know whether the odd thumb is on the right or left hand. Still, this is what you do when you are growing up together. You compare thumbs.

Or maybe, when you're a teenager, you compare a whole lot more than that. Suddenly, your body going all wonky on you, you look at yourself amid others and think, am I normal? Am I developing as the guys or girls around me are? Others heighten your concern. They make fun of your ears or your hair. (I remember, years later, someone seeing a picture of me from when high school saying I was really cute. I didn't think of myself as that in high school--and still wouldn't. But I wonder if it was all those others, talking me down, that in part affected the image I had of me back then. Or maybe I just look good in pictures, as some have noted.)

Take any given moment, and our own perception of our looks can vary. I can be quite nice looking one day and a too-quickly-aging man the next. Thin or fat but on the scale still the same weight. Perhaps we like to have someone there to tell us, give us perspective, on who we really are--or rather, what our bodies really are. And that's the essence of Hannah Pittard's story.

Start not with a sister but with a man and a woman of dubious relation--strangers perhaps, or girl/boyfriend playing strangers? Take off their clothes. Expose them to each other. Evaluate. Read about the two of them here at Narrative Magazine. (Log-in required--but it's free!)

On "Toggling the Switch" by Alicia Gifford (3080 words) ***

So many stories depend on a horrible incident. So many others depend on some sort of infidelity. Gifford does a grand job here of merging the two. I love how the incident comes out of nowhere. We think we're getting one story and end up with another. And then the first story comes back, in what now seems rather unimportant. Nothing like something else to put things in perspective. Read the story here at Narrative Magazine (log-in required--but it's free!).

On "Whatever's Left of Normal" by Don Evans (3791 words) ***

Two Christmases, two stories, each one wrapped around the other to provide meaning and context. Parallel stories are a much-used technique, and this piece uses the technique to full effect. To understand that effect, I ponder what Don Evans's piece would be with only one of the stories. If one stuck with only the war story, certainly there'd still be quite a bit at stake--we're talking a life here, a quandary between saving one's self, following the rules, or saving another (or possibly simply losing both one's self and the other). It would be a compelling story, but it probably wouldn't have as much heart, wouldn't seem as real. It's the other story, the reminiscence, that grounds the war story here, that makes it something we can all feel, that pushes the story of lives at stake into our everyday life. And yet, that story by itself would not seem like much. It is only when the stakes are raised--at war--that suddenly a story about a bat becomes fraught with meaning. You can think about the technique for yourself by reading the story here at Narrative (Story Quarterly) (log-in required--but it's free!).

On "Superhero" by Reese Kwon (3909 words) ****

Why is it that college so often means breaking with all the traditions and rules that one lived by while growing up? Perhaps, the answer is rather obvious. Students, out on their own for the first time, feel free finally to experiment, to be themselves, to take on a new systems of belief that don't simply fit into that which their parents have. And yet, there are complications in that. A student may become Cassandra, as the protagonist of this story becomes, but can she truly get away from her parents' authority? Or rather, does the new self continue to hide in one's old self? Perhaps, the true step in becoming an adult is learning how to be one's self even when with one's parents. Or perhaps it's learning to negotiate between selves. Or perhaps there never is any growing up, never is any becoming an adult. The fact is I'm nearing forty, and I still have difficulty negotiating that space between them and me. But while the world, I think, in some ways becomes no more easier to figure out as one ages, the anxiousness one feels at the start of that journey on one's own is perhaps at its most in the late teens and early twenties, in this college-going time. Kwon's story captures the hope and dispiritedness of those years very well. Read it here at Narrative. (Log-in required--but it's free!)