New Yorker Short Story Review #284: "Notions of the Sacred" by Aysegul Savas

Review of the short story from the Jan. 2 & 9, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

This is the second short story I've read now by Aysegul Savas and her third appearance in The New Yorker. With two novels out -- Walking on the Ceiling (2019) and White on White (2021) -- and a list of publications that includes not only The New Yorker, but the Paris Review, Granta, and a host of others, Savas has got to be considered one of the hottest emerging writers working in the English language right now. 

The question to me is whether she has what it takes to rise beyond the sort of MFA, literary magazine, big city intellectual level of literary success that she is operating in right now. The question after that is...who really cares? She's clearly a gifted writer working with the kind of lofty, intelligent themes that cause reader to ponder weeks and months after they've read something of hers, enough to make them want to read something else by her. That's not necessarily enough to get to James Patterson level, with Selma Hayek starring in the film adaptation of one of her books, but it's enough to keep her in the game. 

"Notions of the Sacred" plays with the idea that women gain some kind of deep inner power or strength during pregnancy. The story parallels the two pregnancies of both the main character and her friend Zoe, with Zoe being farther along and therefore more experienced in the ways of being pregnant. The bottom line is (*spoiler alert*) that the main character ends up having a miscarriage and her friend Zoe seems to shy away from her after that, perhaps fearing that the main character's misfortune will take away some of her own power -- or worse -- cause her to have a miscarriage as well. Thus, there is a sort of dichotomy between this life event that makes you more powerful, but also the delicate nature of it. 

Furthermore, Aysegul Savas is, quite clearly, playing with -- as the title suggests -- the very idea that there is something sacred, powerful, or mystical about pregnancy. That's how I read this story. While there may be other interpretations, I don't see how you can get around this one. Perhaps the "powerful" clairvoyant, confident feeling (the main character, when she finds out she is pregnant, buys an outrageous hat and wears it confidently, relishing in the looks from passers-by) is simply due to hormones. 

So why all the personal and societal mysticism around pregnancy? There must be something mystical, mythical, or magical about the creation of new life, right? The pregnancy brought the main character closer to Zoe, with whom she had become distant for a long while. But then the miscarriage caused them to become distant again. Apparently the sacred power of being pregnant was -- to Zoe -- some kind of closed-door club. By being unfortunate, the main character lost her ticket to membership.

This story -- I think -- resists any kind of easy interpretation. To me it's not clear what Aysegul Savas is trying to say in "Notions of the Sacred" except that they are, perhaps that...just notions. Not rules, not laws, not theories, not even customs, as suggested by a dinner party guest the main character encounters (Greek School vs. American School of thought about informing people of a new pregnancy) but notions. And how they play out amongst individuals in a society is anyone's guess.