New Yorker Fiction 2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.
Frederick Jackson Turner
Born November 14, 1861

The Life You Save

November 16, 2015, Mark Haddon, “The Weir”: Fifty-three-year-old Ian spots a figure on the weir (British for "dam," I discover), and when she goes over into a rushing river, he dives in to rescue her. ¶ Haddon prepares the reader for what is to come: that buttercups contain the same chemicals as semen and corpses; that a day is warm and cold at the same time; that an invisible boundary exists between town and country, at very nearly the spot where Ian saves Kelly, a twenty-four-year-old woman who has mental difficulties. In spite of her initial anger over Ian's having saved her life—he nearly loses his own—they continue to meet in tea shops and cafés to exchange information: he about his failed life, and she about the voices that cause discomfort when they’re not present. ¶ Ian finally puts in a garden in the back of his house: “I’m sick of looking out onto a piece of wasteland” (79). The story ends philosophically, echoing all the imagery Haddon has introduced earlier, swirling together toward a deep drain in that river:

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“He still dreams of the river, the thunder of the weir, the currents unfurling downstream. May blossom and cirrus clouds. He is no longer drowning. No one is drowning. Though they will all go down into the dark eventually. Him, Maria, Kelly, Timothy. . . . And the last few minutes may be horrible, but that’s O.K., it really is, because nothing is lost and the river will keep on flowing and there will be dandelions in spring and the buzzard will circle above the wasteland” (79).

Haddon’s most recent work, published in 2015, is The Red House.
Photograph, Steven Barritt
Design, John Gall

NEXT TIME: My Book World, Mary Norris's Between You and Me

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

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