IT’S JUST THE SUN RISING
by James Ross
I usually like the short stories on the East of the Web website. They’re modern, quick, and international. I get a look at life from a different perspective. I don’t know why but this story grabbed me from the opening paragraph.
My room faces the sun in the morning and on clear summer mornings it wakes me bright and fresh, no matter what time I stayed up till; I’ll get up and make breakfast, watch TV, have a shower. If it’s before six in the morning I usually have a cup of tea and go back to bed where I’ll doze until seven and wake with a thick head.
Those are the words of a fifteen-year-old girl. I remember the summer of my fifteenth year very clearly. Maybe that’s why I kept on reading. But, she’s different from me. She’s an artist. I don’t know where she lives, but it’s not the US. She has an older sister with children, an older brother, and a mam.
The story is told in the first person. It covers only about an hour or so of her life. Her main focus of this time I spend with her is her father. It’s his birthday and she is drawing a picture of him.
The story is only three pages long but at the end I know quite a bit about her. Unfortunately for me, it just ends. I found myself shouting, “Wait! You didn’t finish the story!”
I don’t like any story that leave me dangling. It’s these stories that make me think I’m missing something with this whole short story business. I did, however, like the narrator and I’m glad I read it.
After this inconclusive review, you may not want to read the story. But, if you do, you can find it HERE.
Short Story Monday is sponsored by John at Book Mind Set.
Me too- I want stories to end!!!
Yeah, I agree. I don’t mean a big climactic ending, but I want some sort of en
I never see the point of stories that have a beginning but no end, or sometimes they seem to be just an episode with neither a beginning nor an end. Call me old-fashioned but I want a story not a snapshot.
Hi Margot,
I’m glad you enjoyed my story, and I must apologise if the ending appeared a little inconclusive. The resolution isn’t in the narrative structure, but in the emotional release felt by the girl in seeing her father emerge from her memory onto the page. Essentially it’s a love letter, from a daughter to her absent father, but I can see that it could have been made more explicit.
I just try to set down in words the fragments of real life that I observe (the snapshots, if you like), and trap the reader in the moment, and the emotion, rather than resorting to neat but artificial endings. Maybe in doing that I’m being a little selfish, a little bit precious, and perhaps I’m not serving the reader as best I should. I’m not sure.
But I’m glad you mostly liked it. And if I was to write a short story with a proper conclusion, would you consider posting it on your blog?
James
I can see where that would be frustrating for sure! I need to pull out my book of short stories…I think I’m juggling too many books right now!
I’ve just read it and liked it. Maybe because I read James’ comment first I could see that it does end and it ends as it does because that’s her life – an absent father. I thought it was sad. I hope James does write one of his stories for your blog.
By the way I can’t remember the summer of my fifteenth year much at all, wish I could!
Not my fifteenth summer, but my sixteenth, I worked as a nurses’ aide at the hospital – the 7-3 shift. It just about killed me getting up that early. I had two big east windows and they didn’t help me greet the morning one bit. :<) I'm still the same. Now that I don't have kids at home to transport or get up early and I don't have an outside job, I can sleep later. I know, I know the dawn is pretty but I'd rather see it in pictures!