The Third Person by Richard Leise, 2023
The magic trick:
Hideous subject matter described beautifully
Grisly subject matter today, be forewarned. We have a dead child lying in the city street. Caution tape. Detectives. It’s bad.
But this isn’t simply a trigger warning from me. The grisly subject matter is essential to describing the magic trick at work. This story is written beautifully – every sentence reading like the next line in an impeccably crafted poem.
The effect is odd. You find yourself in awe of the exquisitely detailed world being created, even as the picture the details form is utterly ugly.
And that’s quite a trick on Leise’s part.
The selection:
There are children in the streets. There are streets in the children. Separating a child from her mother is strange under any circumstances. When the mother herself is a kid, her fear is casual. Her fear is ancient. Her fear is easy. She holds onto fear, the idea of it, the mind inside the idea that this, all of this, is Setup. None of this is unique and that this misfortune makes her common makes her angry and anger replaces fear and this is the outline defining grief. This is the outline defining empathy. This is the outline defining forgiveness. Only there is no one to forgive. She holds on to what she can.
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