SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 6, 2022] “Milk”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 6. To officially kick off the 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar, here is a story about faith and carbs from the author of The Prince of Mournful Thoughts.
I really like this kind of story that seems very grounded in reality but which ha a kind of fantastical element.
Essentially the narrator of the story is a wet nurse. She has been the wet nurse for every baby in the King’s castle for decades.
We learn how the wet nurse first came into the royal family’s employ. The then wet nurse for the royal baby had died. The narrator was a down and out woman whose baby was now two and whose husband was dead. She rushed to the castle, breasts full of milk. Her milk is practically magical as the babies grow large and thrive. They learn to speak early and some even walk at nine months.
Her own baby suffered–he was not allowed to steal milk from what was now the king’s property. But he is an adult now and married himself.
In the story, the King is travelling and the family (including the wet nurse) goes with him. The King’s baby impresses everyone with its precociousness. But the nurse worries that she has made the King too powerful–he seems capable of conquering anything he sees.
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