New Yorker Fiction Review #198: "It's a Summer Day" by Andrew Sean Greer

Review of a short story from the June 19th, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...

A middle-aged writer travels to Italy to appear in an award ceremony -- for a literary prize he is not sure yet if he's won -- in order to get out of the country while his former lover is getting married. In the process, he reminisces about a love affair he had with a much older, an much more famous writer, who won the Pulitzer Prize while they were together.

"It's a Summer Day" is a humorous and touching story about how our past lives, our past loves, continue to echo through our current lives, and also about our innate need for recognition, our need to be noticed, even if we know the attention is superficial.

There is something very human, very honest, about Andrew Sean Greer's writing, at least in this story. It's always much easier to like a character when you can understand their baggage, understand what it is that weighs them down. And Greer reveal's the main character's baggage very early, making him feel both humble and likable. At the same time, I wonder how long before the narration of this kind of navel-gazy, "not much is really happening other than the main character's inner monologue" kind of writing I could take before I started to glaze over. Luckily, I did not have to wonder long, because it's a short story.

Interesting passage about relationships: "It was in the middle of their time together, when Less was finally worldly enough to be a help with travel, and Robert had not become so filled with bitterness that he was a hindrance; the time when a couple finds its balance, and passion quiets from its early scream, but gratitude is still abundant; the moments that no one realizes are the golden years."