Sunday, July 8, 2012

Day One Hundred Ninety: "Another Life" by Paul La Farge

Perspective.

A frustrated writer sits at a bar after abandoning a family party where his wife, the pediatrician, is contentedly spending her time without him. The reader gets to watch this man interact with a young attractive bartender and it, for me, provided a realistic look at a very specific kind of loneliness that can exist in an "unequal" marriage, at least one that is perceived to be unequal by one or both of the parties to it.

The girl though has her own story. By story's end, after the bartender and the despaired man have hasty sex in a bathroom stall, the reader sees into the mind of this young girl and the story comes full circle. Loneliness has many faces. It's all a matter of perspective after all.

This was a really well written story too...I enjoyed it and would read more by this author. A link to the online story is here:

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2012/07/02/120702fi_fiction_lafarge?currentPage=all

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