Chekhov's Mistress
Granta no. 88
Moorish Girl Laila Lalami, the author of The Things That Death Will Buy, mentions Granta’s latest issue on her site today. Granta’s thematic issues sometimes cause me to put it aside forever, but this one on mothers is interesting because, well, who hasn’t had a mother? At first glance it looks compelling with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alexandra Fuller, Masha Gessen, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Jim Lewis, Ian McEwan, Edmund White and Paul Theroux.
I chose to read Masha Gessen’s piece, “Mutations” somewhat randomly, although I did recently see her mentioned at Beatrice, and very briefly met her brother at the recent n+1 reading. No need to go into details, but it’s a well written piece, and interestingly, there are a lot of parallels to my own life (okay, I’m not a woman, I’m not Jewish and I’ve not personally encountered her affliction, but the rest of it, or some of it; well, at least one or two things).
From Mutations:
“My mother had last woken up at seven that morning—four o’clock in California, when I’d first woken up—and asked for ice cream. Her liver was failing. Her throat must have been burning up. She died a few minutes before ten. That was the moment I had bolted awake for the second time, the bizarre toxic symptoms of three hours earlier mysteriously gone, and my inextricable physical relationship to my mother proven to me for the first time in my conscious life—at the very moment hers ended.”
I found the story poignant and captivating, and since it is one of the few available on-line, I recommend checking it out. Here is a mention in the Edinburgh Sunday-Herald.
Read widely, think well, and write often.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: January 12, 2005
- Filed Under:
Literary Journals
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
