New Yorker Fiction Review #191: "Deaf and Blind" by Lara Vapnyar

Review of a short story from the April 24, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...

Lara Vapnyar's story "Deaf and Blind" fits squarely into the genre of short story I like to call the "My Messed-Up Childhood" genre. When you read enough short stories, you can't help but start putting them into categories. Only Lara Vapnyar's stories, taking place in communist Russia in the 70s, are that much more unique and entrancing.

There is no discernible plot to "Deaf and Blind," parts of it are even uncomfortable to the point of being downright "willies-inducing," and yet somehow it's hard to take your eyes away from it, all the same. The world is a pretty bizarre place viewed through the eyes of a 10 year old girl, and Lara Vapnyr's worlds are even more so.

I felt the most genuine part of the story was when Vapnyar's narrator talks of her times spent waiting for her father to come for his weekend visits, and the things her father would promise to take her to do. Ultimately, very few of these promises ever work out, but the narrator doesn't seem to mind too much. Like many children, she idolizes her father even though she knows he's imperfect, and repeatedly gives him a chance to do the right thing. This, to me, was the most genuine part of the story.

The parts about the deaf and blind lover, her mother's "pee partner" in the hospital, and a few other things, felt slightly contrived, but they still somehow worked. Maybe they are from true experience? I don't know.

I've read better Vapnyar stories in The New Yorker. This one was mildly entertaining, but will fade from memory pretty quickly, I'd think.