Review of a short story from the May 20, 2019 issue of The New Yorker... One of the best short stories I've read in The New Yorker for a while, mostly because I haven't been reading many short stories in The New Yorker lately. But also because it's a great, well-structured story. Incidentally, it has almost nothing to do with Egypt. The story functions as sort of a mini, domestic epic spanning about 25 years in the lives of Anna and Danielle, a mother and daughter whose husband and father, respectively, commits suicide when Danielle is about nine or 10. Anna never actually reveals to her daughter that Paul committed suicide, instead telling their daughter that he had a heart condition. Thus, Danielle grows up with an excess of concern about her heart's heath, among other mild dysfunctions like those we all accrue given enough time (which is to say, almost any amount of time as a human being). I always appreciate stories that capture big chunks of time in peop
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