Review of the Day: The Arrow by Gina Chung

Last week the O. Henry Prize Winners was published in the United States and I have had a chance to read a few of the stories. I just finished Gina Chung’s “The Arrow”, and I enjoyed it. Here’s the basic idea of the story:

“Here are some more facts: you are pregnant, and you do not know exactly who the father is because, in the span of one bad week, you slept with your ex, a chef whose late hours you still haven’t unlearned; your married coworker who says he and his wife are experimenting with ethical non-monogamy; and a tattoo artist you met in a cheesy bar in Williamsburg. This all took place in the days after you called home for the first time in a year to wish your mother a happy birthday and she hung up on you” (pgs 14-15).

So, just on the second page of the story you learn that the narrator is pregnant, that the father might be any of four different people she had sex with — none of which she seems to actually love — and that she has a less than great relationship with her mother. At this point, I would not want to be this person, but Chung has definitely captured my attention and I am emotionally invested in this woman.

I also appreciated this description of the pregnancy test kit and the tremendous emotions connected to whether peeing on a stick will make a blue or a pink symbol appear:

“… you, staring at the stick balanced precariously on the edge of your bathroom sink and praying, Please, God, I’ll do anything, but you can’t think of what to say after that, what to offer that might be a fair trade for not being pregnant. When the pink cross appears, it feels like a confirmation of what you’ve known all along—that God, if he exists, does not give a shit” (p. 13).

As the story progresses, the mother temporarily moves in with the daughter. We learn that the narrator was raised without a father in her life. The mother becomes quite invested in her future grandchild.

I also enjoyed the end of the story:

”She does not tell you that she loves you, nor does she tell you that everything is going to be okay, because both of you are past believing things like that. And as the sun climbs over the lip of the sky, and the two of you watch its ascent, gold filling the corners of your apartment, you begin to understand that there is only this moment, and then the next, and then the next, and that the only thing to do in the meantime is to keep on living” (p. 29).

Have you read any good stories recently?