This story, which can be found in the debut effort of Wild Strawberries, is a nice piece of flash fiction that begins: "Men don't leave their wives for me."
The next 800 plus words are interesting to me because while Pia has her unnamed narrator explaining to the man who has just left her why she's happy for him, how she imagines his going back to his wife is working out, how marriage is a promise, etc., one gets the feeling that she's truly telling herself all of this, creating her own reasons for feeling better about his ending their affair.
It's handled very subtly though, to the point that I've read the story four or five times to convince myself that my own reading is an accurate one. To be able to walk on along the tightrope between these two so convincingly is what makes this effort so interesting to me.
I love the angle she took with this. Pia has a story collection coming out soon, "Famous Fathers." I can't wait to read it.
Posted by: Katrina Denza | February 04, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Excellent. Pia's fabulous. Can't wait for her book.
Posted by: Myfanwy Collins | February 04, 2007 at 12:07 PM