I’ve had a rough few months, and have gotten out of the habit of reading lately. September I slowly started easing myself in, but even so, there was only one standout short I found myself pondering throughout the month.

Mal de Caribou by Becca De La Rosa

Mal de Caribou by Becca De La Rosa is a throwback from 2022, but I somehow missed it when it came out. If you missed it, too, it’s time to rectify that.

Okay, I’ll admit that I had no idea what the title of this story meant before reading it. Or even after reading it. This is a story that came up on my podcast shuffle while I was driving and, because it was The Dark, I let it play. I am so happy I did. I haven’t been listening to The Dark (or any podcasts) for awhile, and I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy stories from this publication. Always dark, reliably literary, and usually a gut punch… and Mal de Caribou did not disappoint.

But back to the meaning of the title. Should I tell you? It’s a complete spoiler, and the story reads differently if you know what it means. The story used alternative names for this concept at the climax, but it never explains the title outright. I only found it because I was looking for the link to the story and, surprise surprise, Mal de Caribou has a very specific meaning. I’ll refrain from saying more, except, if you DON’T know what it means, perhaps read it once, then look it up, and read it again.

Onto the actual story. It feels like two stories in one: that of the narrator and her love, Leda, and that of the narrator and her client, Dorothy. These two overlapping stories feel almost unrelated at the beginning. But with each scene they grow closer, circling like carrion birds in the desert until, in the final scene, they swoop in together. I found the pacing and climax extremely satisfying.

Trigger Warning: Disordered eating

Forty-Eight Minutes at the Trainview Café by M. Bennardo

This is one that I didn’t read this month. I listened to it a year (or more?) ago on the Asimov podcast. The story follows a man who lives in virtual reality and, bored of all of the thriller options he has, chooses to book a spot at the Trainview Cafe. This is a simulation that mimics reality so thoroughly that people simply walk around, looking at the details of life that have been lost in virtual reality. At first the man is disappointed in how boring the simulation is, but eventually he comes to appreciate it. In the end, he is offered a choice that turns… well, listen and see.

The past month, I’ve found myself questioning my dependency on devices. My iPhone battery has been drained to the point that it doesn’t hold a charge for half a day. Replacing the battery has proved troublesome — there are few certified Apple services in Bulgaria, and the two of them that were recommended wanted to either take my phone for at least 10 days or had a repair slot more than three weeks in the future. I realized:

• I didn’t want to be without my phone for a week. That seemed impossible. But why? The only reason I NEED a phone is to communicate with my family about pick up times. And surely I could figure that out for a week considering I work in the same office as my husband and he still has a phone.
• I use my phone a LOT throughout the day. Yes, the battery is dying. But if I could stay off of discord and twitter, it would probably last into the evening.

These realizations, combined with my friend sharing Thia Lim’s article “The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age” had me thinking it’s time to touch earth. I spent some time walking outside, enjoying autumn’s low sun and long shadows, and all I could think about was the ending of Forty-Eight Minutes at the Trainview Café. Not so much an “are we in the Matrix” moment as… an inevitable hurtling towards a virtual reality that lacks the details and pleasure of analog life.

Longform Reads

One reason I’m not spending a lot of time on shorts at the moment is that I’ve gotten back into novels. I’ve been reading a lot of Gillian Flynn. At the moment I am re-listening to Gone Girl. My perspective on the story has changed drastically since my first read. I read it around when it first came out. 2014 at the latest. Which means at most I had been married for two years. While I enjoyed the mystery of the story originally, now, ten years later, I am enjoying the characters. I have a level of empathy for their situations that I simply didn’t — couldn’t — have when my marriage was fresh and new and lovely.

The other book I’m reading is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Yes, I was inspired to read it because of the Netflix show. Yes, it is better than the show. Weirdly, I am most loving Ken Liu’s translation notes. Most of the translated books I’ve read have minimal notes. These notes provide a fascinating insight into word choice and cultural context for the story that, if I just read the story without the notes, I would miss. At BulgaCon, one of the topics that came up was how much of another culture to explain when writing for a market that is outside of that culture. (Specifically, when writing about Bulgarian mythology, how much do we need to spoon feed to American and British readers?) The consensus was that writers are trending towards less explanation, which I agree with. Explanation can break voice and water down the story. But I love the opportunity that exists when work is translated to have footnotes with the cultural and historical context of passages. Which is weird, because I never used to like footnotes. Now, I want to explore more translated and annotated books. (And especially more of Ken Liu’s translations).

So, not a lot to share in my current reading. Hopefully, I will get back into it during the next few months. Please feel free to share what you are loving so I can find my next reads. Until then, I hope you enjoyed these thoughts!