New Yorker Fiction Review #278: "Skyscrapers" by Alejandro Zambra
In March 2013 it will be ten years since I started reading and reviewing the short stories in The New Yorker. Anyone with basic math skills can tell you that I've missed a few short stories here and there over the years (and more than a few in the past couple years). But the point is I have reviewed a lot of short stories in that time and, frankly, I've forgotten far more of them than I remember.
Usually, when I read an author whose work I've already read, my memory gets jogged pretty quickly. Not so with Alejandro Zambra, two of whose stories I have apparently already read and reviewed on this blog (back in June 2014 and Sept. 2015). Go figure.
Frankly (again with the frankness...am I ever not frank? I hope not), most of the time reading and reviewing the short story in The New Yorker is kind of a slog. Which is why I stopped doing it regularly. It just started becoming too rare that I encountered a short story that was a.) worth reading all the way to the end and, b.) worth writing about. Which is why I was pleased this AM when Alejandro Zambra's prose in "Skyscrapers" leapt (leaped?) off the page and gave me a reason to write this review.
Zambra is another author like Etgar Keret who seems to be most at home writing about adolescence or the continued-awkwardness of the immediate post-adolescence period of ones late teens / early 20s. Few enough authors seem to write about this weird period in a person's life -- or write about it well, anyway -- that when a good story like "Skyscrapers" comes along its refreshing.
Not that a lot "happens" in this story. Basically the main character meets a cute girl he likes, has a fight with his father, moves out his parents' home, and starts up a relationship with the girl. So, actually a lot happens. But somehow it doesn't feel like it, and that's still okay. Apologies if this makes no sense. Just read the story.
What I like about this piece is that from the very start the prose felt alive and electrified in a way that I rarely encounter. Also the author frames the story as sort of a letter to the girl he meets (and eventually marries), using the second person the entire time but leaving us in complete mystery as to the significance of the relationship until the very, very end of the story.
For lack of any better way to articulate why this was a good story, I will just say that Zambra's details all felt believable. The conflict between the character and his father, the character's overall attitude toward life, the kinds of friends he has, etc. all just "worked" really well and created a concrete, intriguing world I would have liked to spend more time in.
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