In this post: A country girl goes to the big city hoping to make it big, but instead, she gets a big heartbreak.
Category: Short Story Collection + Fast Fiction
Ramiah Recommended?
Yes.
As I close out my reviews of Longreads' Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2022 list I can confirm that all of the stories are sad. This one is no exception, but its sad focus does not overwhelm it like the other short stories I have reviewed from this list.
A country girl named Xiaolei goes to the city, not wanting to be stuck in the country. Works a job where she loses the pen of her work husband (a customer she likes). Fails to return the pen to him and loses it in the process. She's working a new job but still looking for a pen like it - perhaps to hold on to the hope of the older customer, just to have something else to focus on than her current situation.
The one theme that is strong among the short stories on Longreads' (and a positive one despite all the stories' sad premises) is the imagery. A second positive theme is the expression of human emotion.
Here's an example of both, respectively:
"Still, she thought the flower shop had helped. In her first job, working at the bottling plant, she’d felt herself turning into something nearly savage, fingers stiff, mind numb, chest a cage." Xiaolei was bogged down by her job but felt tied to it given her new beginnings in Shanghai.
"The ease he carried with him worked on her like a balm, though he rarely said much—indeed, now that she’d memorized his order, there was scarcely any need to speak at all. She stepped toward the buckets with their floral charges, grateful now for their perked-up appearance, and tucked her hair behind her ears." Xiaolei felt charged with feelings of her work-crush, and the rush of infatuation is very clearly articulated.
As the story didn't end as I would've liked, a fairy-tale ending where the protagonist and her love interest have mutual feelings for each other and become soul mates against all odds, but as real life can be, things didn't work out that way.
And perhaps that's the subliminal message of this short story, life isn't a fairytale. Going to the big city and expecting a perfect life is a fairy tale. Expecting to have a love-at-first-sight with a customer regular is a fairy tale. And that's why this is another sad story on the list, haha.
Take a read here and let me know what you think!
Ramiah Reflects
Questions to Ask Yourself (and answer!):
Can life be a fairy-tale?
Do we read for its story or the escapism it offers?
Ramiah's Re-read When
Re-read when:
You want a story where you root for the main character.
See below for my book notes:
(No notes this time, folks!)
Check out my other posts and book notes here.
Until next time!
Montana Houston
