Published : 2021 || Format : print || Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the...
It's been a while since I read a short story. Today morning, I picked Anne Enright's In the Bed Department, mostly because of the title, which I felt quite amusing, but also because I have been seeing Anne Enright's books a lot lately, ever since The Forgotten Waltz was published last year.
The escalator is actually a loose metaphor to herself in the bed department at home. After seducing a 60+ year old widower and sleeping with him, Kitty gets pregnant. She begins to see the escalator as a physical representation of the baby inside her - the baby that she believes she is carrying, but isn't too sure of since she did not do any test. When the escalator stops working one day, she begins to fear for her child.
In the Bed Department was an interesting story, but it didn't intrigue me as I hoped it would. There was nothing special about the story, though Enright's writing is quite wonderful. I liked the connection between her baby and the escalators, but Kitty as a character didn't quite call out to me. To be honest, she bugged me, and I'm not sure why. There was little mention of her kids, barring a few passages. Still, this is a really short story (took me about 15 minutes) and it was a great introduction to Enright's writing. I doubt I will be rushing to read her books though.
I read this story online on the The New Yorker.
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