In college, the teacher who shaped me the most was Amy Bloom, and her "blockbuster" story was "Silver Water." Bloom made fiction slightly less mysterious by explaining, "A story is just an account of a stranger coming to town." For example, that stranger could be: psychosis.
As an undergrad, I thought "Silver Water" was sort of bizarre, but now its events seem almost "normal" to me. Where is the family whose members haven't endured something like this (maybe something in a milder form)?
A girl, Rose, has a talent for singing. But, also, she has issues. At fifteen, she becomes moody and tearful, then she stops coming home. This leads to a tense exchange between her parents, something for the Dialogue Hall of Fame:
After three weeks, my mother said to my father, "She's going off."
"What is that, your professional opinion?" He picked up the newspaper and put it down again, sighing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I know something's bothering her. Have you talked to her?"
"What's there to say? David, she's going crazy. She doesn't need a heart-to-heart talk with Mom, she needs a hospital..."
At this point, the story becomes like a roller-coaster; every scene has vivid, scary lighting, and the pace is relentless. During family therapy, Rose begins singing and massaging her own breasts. Nervous laughter ensues, and the inept therapist says, "I wonder why everyone finds Rose's inappropriate behavior so entertaining....And how would you explain her behavior?"
The narrator, Rose's sister, says, "I don't know. Maybe she's trying to get you to stop talking about her in the third person...."
Bloom then touches on the insanity of insurance plans, the value of common sense, the role of subtext within a family. Although she is narrating horrific events, she uses "gallows humor"; describing a moment of departure from a halfway house, she notices Rose "winking at the poor, drooling boy on the couch."
"Silver Water" is discussed in the NYTimes this week; I'll include the essay link here. I'd just add, to Yiyun Li's comments, that this is a rare work of contemporary literary fiction in which actual high-stakes events occur. Also, it's a story about adult siblings; adult siblings are everywhere, but it seems to me they aren't often featured in movies. Finally, this is one case of an author "landing the plane"; I wouldn't change anything about the last paragraph. Here's the story, in full.
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