This Very Rat's Tumblr Blog of Literary Rants

Dispatches from Dhaka City

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"I learned how to behave from Emma"—Robert Gottlieb

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"Oh, not really."

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New Yorker Fiction Review: “The Labyrinth”—Amelia Gray

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Amelia Gray, ‘a hipster of the MFA generation’, shows up on this week’s The New Yorker’s Fiction section. Her story, “The Labyrinth”, has a stupid ending. It starts off pretty well. Gray writes like a staff writer of the New Yorker. Her prose is clear and simple. Some of the descriptions (“and the tap water had begun to taste oddly of blood”) seem interesting and make you keep on reading. What happens in the story is this: a guy named Dale is into Hellenic Myth and every year he organizes a jamboree that has a corn maze that’s supposedly the highlight of the event. Only this year, there’s no maze but a labyrinth. Dale promises that in the center you discover the most desirable thing. Well, you don’t. You discover a Minotaur.  That’s what our narrator encounters, and that’s when the story ends. Hated it. Rating: 3/10

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New Yorker Fiction Review: "Sweetness”—Tony Morrison

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There’s not much Morison imagery here. This is why I like this. The story’s an excerpt from her new book, “God Save the Children”. I like stories where narrators talk and don’t feel like they need to have a flowery tongue. That’s what I liked about Morrison’s narrator in this story. It’s about a light-skinned Black lady disgusted to find her daughter born with a dark skin. It’s about racism, motherhood, the black struggle. The daughter’s name is Sweetness. Yeah, I know. Morrison can write like hell. I just want to see her write on something that isn’t the usual Morrison subject matter. Then again, I don’t really care. She’s been writing on what she’s been writing on her whole career, and it’s not like it gets boring or predictable. That’s what I like the most about her work. Read this. Rating: 7/10

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New Yorker Fiction Review: "Alice" by Elizabeth Harrower

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The Australian writer doesn’t publish much. That’s what I’ve heard.  This story however was pleasing to read. A girl vying for her mother’s love and attention. Love and attention that the mother concentrates on doling out to her sons instead. I like how the story encompasses Alice’s whole life. There’s this part in the story where Alice and her husband are both termed “followers”, and that resonated a lot with me. The descriptions were beautiful. I would have given you examples, but I read it a long while ago and can’t find the issue.

Rating: 6/10