ENG 263: The Love Story

Jack from Elizabeth Tallent’s “No One’s A Mystery” is, without a doubt, a scumbag. He is a married man who is in a romantic relationship with a young woman who has just turned eighteen. Jack’s dialogue seems to suggest that Jack and the narrator are sexually active, which, depending on the setting, means that Jack […]

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Butler’s “The Trip Back” is a heartbreaking story.  It is different from the love stories we have read in the sense that it is not necessarily about romantic love.  There is certainly room to see that, of course, between Mai and her husband.  There are several scenes between the two in which he describes their relationship, […]

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This story is perfectly heartbreaking, and it is because the issue at hand is so real and relatable and the events involved are not at all melodramatic. The story is so basic: a family member is being reunited with another family member after many years. And the events of the story are so simple: a man drives […]

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I am always somewhat amazed when a story of just two pages can force me to feel a myriad of emotions. The opening is simple, with a couple depicted carving pumpkins, one much more talented than the other. But Clark is 78 while Allison is a youthful 35. We were met with the same jarring […]

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He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes. – “No One Is A Mystery” by Elizabeth Tallent While it could be said that Tallent did not mean for her short story to be about domestic abuse, not […]

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I think, firstly, that the characters of “It’s Bad Luck to Die” keep the story from being clichéd. We start right off the bat with a tall girl and a short man, something that is often seen as undesirable. The main character herself points this out, but it adds an element of reality to the […]

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In my other workshop, the class just worked on short pieces that began with a focus on a concrete object and then expanded out to a wider, more abstract lens. Tattoos were an example of a concrete object that could easily be expanded upon. Though this technique is obviously more prevalent in creative non-fiction, I […]

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“It’s Bad Luck to Die” resembles more of a “traditional” love story than in “Fatso” and “Beatrice.”  While Lois and Tiny’s relationship is odd in its own way (their age difference is one example) the relationship is between two normal human beings.  Their relationship is still complex, though. Tattoos are used as a bridge for […]

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