LA CONCHITA

Mirabile dictu! THE NEW YORKER has published a wonderful story. Once grandly noted for the high quality of its fiction, The New Yorker, though still an excellent magazine in the areas of reportage, public interest articles, movie reviews and cartoons, has fallen into a slough of drab story selection in recent years.

La Conchita is an enormously welcome exception to the oblique, irresolute and pedestrian stories I usually quickly dismiss after a few paragraphs, or come to feel like I've been had if I happen to plow through to a meaningless stoppage.

That is stoppage instead of ending. Ending would imply some sort of closure; completeness, which New Yorker fiction has come to disdain.La Conchita is another matter. A speeding bullet of narrative with a moving and unexpected character resolution.

I have never read anything before by T. Coraghessan Boyle, but I hope I have made a significant discovery for myself.This story was printed in last week's New Yorker, so I don't know how long they will keep the link active. I have pasted a copy to Word. If anyone want's to read it I will email it along.