M a short story by Hilary Scudder (2013)
Copy 72 of a signed limited edition of 200 copies
Purchased this week from NIGHTJAR PRESS
If I review this story, it will eventually be found in the thought stream below or by clicking on this post’s title above.
“I crossed the square and headed the way I guessed led west.”
…which happened soon after she “saw an onion rolling unnoticed on the ground.”
But who did not notice it? It was as if it was unnoticed till the split second she noticed it was unnoticed. There is a slow motion version of that split second in this resonating story, still resonating as I write these brief thoughts about the second Nightjar today whence I’ve released its genie. A book with a story that has an enormous interior like an emotional Tardis, I’d say.
The woman (inspired by some Longfellow verse) goes west away from an unhappy marriage, leaving her husband Rolf a letter that exposes her hatred of him. She has planned to meet a man, someone who has swept her off her feet, it seems, a man whose name she’s shortened to M to fit an even smaller book than this. The hotel meeting-place, near the docks (from which docks there is the potential of an even longer journey west as a pilgrim?), seems to have inimical and labyrinthine features. Having encountered another woman called Kristina whereby they share a stolen coat looking like “one lonely fat drunk”, she later rolls unnoticed, like that onion, back the way she came, having been warned against M, and she returns to her husband and her cat Hades.
A few undivulgeable last lines, still resonating. This didactic or undidactic story is, for me, simply what it is, and that is good enough.
Other Nightjars:
https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/nightjar-press/