Julia by Ada Zhang, 2023
The magic trick:
A protagonist stuck in a layered nostalgia loop
We close our week of new voices with Ada Zhang. I hadn’t heard of her before finding this story on Electric Literature. It won’t be the last thing by her I read, though.
Esther is the narrator. Julia is her college friend. The story finds Esther about to move from New York to Nashville, taking stock of things, especially her former friendship with Julia.
The storytelling covers more than 10 years and does a deft job of focusing on the key moments of the friendship and the falling out, so that the reader quickly feels as if they know the women. Even more powerful than that though is the way it writes with nostalgia about a woman who is feeling nostalgia for a friendship that in some ways was done in by nostalgia.
It’s not a showy meta gimmick, but instead a more subtle way to reference itself referencing itself while demonstrating how people can easily get stuck inside their own self-made failure loops.
And that’s quite a trick on Zhang’s part.
The selection:
“I didn’t think you had depth,” Julia said to Esther one night while they were lying on the carpet in the living room, staring mindlessly at the ceiling. Their summer break was coming to an end. In a week, Rooney would return to campus and Julia would return to her dorm. They had just smoked some weed and torn through a family-size bag of tortilla chips, leaving shards at the very bottom.
“You smile a lot. I didn’t think someone so cheerful could be smart.”
As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.
Subscribe to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.
Short Story Magic Tricks 