New Yorker Fiction Review #210: "Poor Girl" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Review of a short story from the Sept. 24, 2018 issue of The New Yorker...

I read this story a while ago now and, unfortunately, not much sticks out about it except the author's portrayal of a small family in Russia that gets broken because of the father's inattention to his wife's emotional needs and his ( seemingly inappropriate) over-attention to their daughter.

This is a pretty straight-line, Point A to Point B type of story, which I appreciate and, in fact, stories like this can "teach" you a lot more about humanity sometimes -- or the author's view of humanity -- than in-depth character studies that take pages and pages (maybe hundreds of pages) to unfold.

That said, I found this story mostly forgettable.