New Yorker Fiction Review #114: "Chicken Hill" by Joy Williams
Issue: Sept. 14, 2015Story: "Chicken Hill" by Joy Williams
Rating: Meh
Review: So I have a confession to make: I'm way, way behind on my New Yorker short story reviewing and this project has long ago ceased to be "fun" and started to be a real burden. However, that does not mean I'm going to quit. That might just mean my reviews become short and un-informative to anyone -- including myself. But hey, this is a BLOG after all. I'm sure I've long since lost any "serious" literary people from my readership and am left with a handful of people (hey Luke, how you doing bro?) who are either so loyal and devoted to me or simply have nothing better to do, or are internet comment robots. I started this project primarily for me, and if, for the time being, it serves me to write simple, insulting, cursory, meaningless, un-informative reviews of these stories, well that's just the way it's gonna have to be, folks.
That said...I pretty much hated this story. It was mind-numbingly, irritatingly difficult to get through. I have the dim impression that this story is about a dying lady. It puts me in mind of the ending of Fiona McFarlane's The Night Guest (oddly enough, I discovered McFarlane's writing because of this project..BOOM...mind blown) but that doesn't redeem this story in any way.
If anything valuable or interesting, there was the cute series of interactions between the old dying lady and the (possibly imaginary) young girl who daily comes to visit her.
I was happy this story was short and I'll be even happier to be done with this review and toss this issue into the recycle bin. Later...
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