SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 14, 2022] “I’ve Thought About Taking Up Another Life”
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 14. Ander Monson, author of The Gnome Stories, will get to the sports pages eventually.
This story had a very strange bookending component. The narrator, as the title says, would like to start another life.
And so, he (I believe) cites the example of a couple, usually middle-aged, let’s call them Diana and Henry. They have been married for a while and have two kids. And then one of them suddenly disappears.
Let’s say it’s Diana. Henry gets a call that Diana hasn’t picked up the kids from daycare. She’s not at home. She wasn’t in an accident. There’s no note. There’s no word. She is just gone.
It’s fascinating the way this story delves into the past of this imagined couple. Turns out that Henry, when he was a child, accused his parents of molestation and satanic ritual and animal sacrifice and worse. Later, Henry learned that all of this was imagined on his part–suggested by his therapist–and that his parents were innocent and loving.
Eventually as Diana’s story gets out people put together that Henry is the kid from the satanic abuse stories and accuse him of lying again. They think he has murdered Diana.
The narrator says that this all happened ten years ago and he remembered reading about it and following it for some time after–while the papers were still interested.
What would it be like to disappear like that?
I rather dig Ander’s self promotion:
— My website: otherelectricities.com
— The books of course, or if books are too much of an investment, how about some t-shirts: angermonsoon.threadless.com
— The Assessment Matters Institute for Assessment Matteration: Where Assessment Really Matters: assmatters.org
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