This is another piece I would consider something of a "memory play." The narrator is speaking from later in her adult life, but keeps flashing back to meetings with two different girls: the daughter of her upstairs neighbor, who was developmentally behind for her age, and a girl at summer camp whom everyone mistook for the narrator's twin. It's a tight story about a borderline-conman (he doesn't really intend to hurt anyone, but he does play all the angles with his bosses and is constantly trying new schemes to make extra money to support his large family) and his encounter with a real theif.
Still, I remember this story from early in 2008. Even Rushdie admits this one might stretch the definition of the anthology's title, as Mueenuddin's stories have been published in American magazines but he apparently only lived in the US for a short time before returning to Pakistan. Nawabdin Electrician by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Narrated in journal entries (some detailed, some not even in complete sentences) by a librarian working at Thomas Edison's West Orange facility, it asks the question: if the phonograph approximated the sense of hearing, and the kinetoscope approximated the sense of sight, what would Edison have come up with to approximate the sense of touch? A bit of a disturbing story in one sense, and a bit uplifting in another.Ģ8. I loved the story then, and I loved it this time around.
This was another re-read for me as well, from early last year. I've read several of Millhauser's stories in magazines he's another author I want to seek out an anthology of. The Wizard of West Orange by Steven Millhauser.
It reaches a slightly cloying but still satisfying ending.Ģ7. The story is built around what the boy thinks as he's listening to the music. The boy's father escaped before atrocities against the Jews started the teacher was not so lucky. Most of the action takes place as the boy watches a violin recital in his living room, given by a renowned Eastern European who had taught the boy's father in the old country. Another one that skirts the edges of genre: is the main character, a young boy, really gifted with the ability to connect with the dead, or is it all in his over-active and overly empathic imagination? The author lets you decide. The Worst You Ever Feel by Rebecca Makkai. The rest of the anthology, now that I'm off the phone.
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