New Yorker Fiction Review #188: "Signal" by John Lanchester

Review of a short story from the April 3, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...

Amidst all the high-minded (read: boring), supposedly literary fiction that shows up in the pages of The New Yorker -- you know, the beautifully-written stuff in which nothing actually happens -- we the faithful readers of this august publication are occasionally treated to a story by someone like John Lanchester who really knows how to weave a tale and does so in a compact, compelling, cant-turn-away-from-it-for-a-moment kind of way.

Someone once said (and I'm paraphrasing): If you're going to write about someone, write about a king. Meaning, essentially, that writing about outlandishly rich or powerful characters is the way to go because, let's face it, who among us is not captivated by the idea of extreme wealth and/or power? Maybe a few of us. But in the case of "Signal," John Lanchester (a former journalist who writes a lot about money) does well to set up this story in the unbelievably lavish mansion of the main character's friend. The mansion has a room solely reserved for pinball machines, and another reserved only for "retro" arcade games. You get the idea.

Maybe it's John Lanchester's training as a journalist that allows him to build a story brick by brick in a suspenseful, well-paced way, but I was drawn-into this tale, this world, right from the get-go. And on a side note, the story lends itself extremely well to "audio" format, which you can listen to HERE.

Lanchester does a nice job of taking a modern day thread -- the search for good wifi -- that everyone can relate to (as well as having to keep children entertained on an adult getaway weekend (which some of us can relate to and some can't)) and working it into a traditional "ghost story" type of framework of suspense and reveal.

So what if the "reveal" at the end of the story is a bit too neat? I didn't care. I enjoyed getting there and will look forward to picking up one of Lanchester's novels soon.