‘The Slip-Up’ by John McGahern

The Slip-Up by John McGahern, 1977

The magic trick:

Forcing the reader to adjust to the story’s terms: a conflict that seems silly at first

So many of these great short stories of this genre of fine detail – think McGahern, Yiyun Li, William Trevor, Maeve Brennan – hinge on a tiny point. Someone looks at someone else a few seconds too long and everything in their world falls apart. Here, in “A Slip-Up,” a couple’s life built on routine crumbles when the husband isn’t outside the grocery store at the appointed time. The horror!

It starts then almost feeling like comedy, a satirical look at this couple’s mundane life. But once the reader gets adjusted to the idea that this ridiculously overblown conflict isn’t a joke, you can settle in and start to understand the story on its terms. You soon see that this conflict is the tip of several icebergs, so that the story isn’t about the conflict at hand; it’s more about the consequences of those bigger conflicts from the characters’ past.

And that’s quite a trick on McGahern’s part.

The selection:

“After I came back from Tesco’s I sorted the parcels,” she said. “And at ten to one, I put the kippers under the grill. Michael will have just about finished the bottle of Bass and be coming out the door of the Royal, I said when I looked at the clock. Michael must have run into someone on his way back, I thought, as it went past one. And when it got to ten past I said you must have fell in with company, but I was beginning to get worried.”

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