It’s Not You by Elizabeth McCracken, 2019
The magic trick:
Taking the narrator through the same process of character analysis as the reader
It’s fitting to celebrate another new year with a short story.
We often look to New Year’s Day to mark some kind of dramatic change or personal improvement.
And we know that short stories so often highlight the pivotal change in a character’s life.
So it fits! And Happy New Year to you!
It’s interesting when our narrator in “It’s Not You” breaks down the fourth wall of sorts and muses, “I would like to say that this was when my life changed.” It’s a great recognition of what we’ve all come to the story to analyze. What did it all mean? What happened as a result?
The narrator is asking the same questions as the reader.
And that’s quite a trick on McCracken’s part.
The selection:
New Year’s Day in the Narcissus Hotel. The lobby was filled with departing hangovers and their owners. Paper hats fell with hollow pops to the ground. Everyone winced. You couldn’t tell whose grip had failed. Nothing looked auspicious. That was good. My New Year’s resolution was to feel as bad as fast as I could in highfalutin privacy, then leave the tatters of my sadness behind, along with the empty bottle and six apple cores.
“How long will you be with us?” asked the spoon-faced, redheaded woman behind the desk. She wore a little white name tag that read Eileen.
“It will only seem like forever,” I promised. “One night.”
She handed me a brass key on a brass fob. Hotels had keys, in those days.
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