They might both be right, but nature later has an adverse impact on Nick’s life. Laurel sees beauty where Nick sees danger. Nick is bored after three minutes of watching twigs float downstream. “These Are the Circumstances” - Nick’s wife Laurel persuades him to go on a nature walk/bath ($25 per hour per person) so they can gain the meditative and calming benefit of communing with leaves and dirt. “We all make bargains in this life,” the woman later says. The man and the old woman both are wagering on the duration of her life. “The Apartment” - A man agrees to pay a monthly sum to an old woman for the duration of her life in exchange for ownership of her apartment when she dies. Sleeping with students is against the rules but sleeping with other teachers turns out to be just as problematic. The narrator of “Not Me” is an unhappy high school teacher who, unlike some of his unhappy colleagues, is not sleeping with a student. No spoiler intended, but if you want to know whether a dog lover will appreciate the ending, the answer is yes. The issues cause a rift between the student and his girlfriend.
This is the kind of story that makes me even more grateful to have been raised in a functional family.Ī medical student practices surgery on dogs in a hospital's “Dog Lab.” The story highlights the ethical issues surrounding the use of dogs that would otherwise have been euthanized (a fate that is only delayed by the surgeries). The mother insists she loves her son but her brand of tough love suggests her primary loyalty is to herself. “The Shape of a Teardrop” - Parents evict their loser son because he refuses to work, knowing his wages will be garnished for child support. She slowly becomes the lead vocalist for a bar band before jealousy (largely the narrator’s) leads to the kind of drama that breaks up bands.
“Big Mary” is a large woman who beats every man she arm-wrestles. The story is so realistic it reads as if Boyle was actually a passenger on the ship. Fear, privation, domestic discord, and culture war lunacy ensue. The narrator of “The Thirteenth Day” is quarantined on a cruise ship with a passenger from Wuhan who has COVID-19. The title story didn’t speak to me, but the others include some of the best short fiction I’ve read in recent memory. They vary in style and subject matter but not in quality. Boyle stories collected in this volume were published in Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, or literary reviews.
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