Short Story Month - Día by Patricia Engel

"Día" by Patricia Engel is another strong short story published by Guernica.  The story can be read a few different ways but one strong aspect is at the simple level of he said (thought)/she said (thought).  I think it's important to remember for writers trying to hit the home run with some deep message, and proper foreshadowing and great metaphors, etc., that the basics still need to ring true.  The dialogue should sound right, the descriptions of the setting, and in this case - a story about a couple of old friends, that never quite decided to become a couple, meeting up again after about five years - really good character development through small things.

It's interesting seeing the different things each remembers from their friendship/almost courtship of five to seven years back.  She looks for the bar he'd had in his tongue piercing, he offers her a cigarette, she remembers their being 'like a couple' because he was always mad at her, he remembers how she broke up with her boyfriend, she remembers him not coming to find her when she did.

Engel slowly lets these facts slip into the conversation the two have, after this five year absence from each other's lives, and does so in a way that probably allows the reader in on how the conversation will end just a little bit before either of the characters do. 

Comments

[Glenn Reiser]

Patricia Engel just published her official website.