Vheissu

The main character of the story is a young man whose family immigrated to the United States. The language of the story is English, but it is peppered with nuggets of Spanish, many of them coarse, most of them regional, some of them blundered (e.g., “Se metío por mis ojos,” instead of “Se metió por mis ojos”). There is plenty of sex. An older brother casts a long shadow over the narrative. Take a wild guess who the author of the story is. It’s Junot Díaz, of course. The short story is “Miss Lora,” which you can read online on the New Yorker website ( here ). It’s the first of six stories selected as finalists for the 2013 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. The collection of six stories is sold as an ebook on Amazon ( here ). It’s a good snapshot of contemporary short fiction. The story, told in the second person, describes how the main character became romantically involved with an older woman, a neighbor called Miss Lora. “Romantically involved”...

This is the fifth comment I’ve rapid-fired about New Yorker stories over the last few days. This time it’s about Junot Díaz’s “ The Pura Principle ” (TNY, Mar. 22, 2010). I had thought about publishing a single post, in which I’d refer briefly to each of the stories I’ve discussed. That was fitting, as not one of these stories seemed especially strong. Some, in fact, appeared particularly weak. I won’t go into details about those that were published in the three issues after the March 22 edition, like the wispy and quirky fable by Janet Frame called “ Gavin Highly ” (April 5). Ben Loory’s “ The TV ” (April 12) is an amusing existential tale, which lost its way in the middle, when the man watching TV finds himself in a show about doctors. At that point, the story stopped being interesting, and it reminded me of Agent Smith in the Matrix , thus becoming what seems like a rather boring allegory of the ego absorbing the world like a black hole. There was also Joyce Carol Oates’s “ I.D. ”...