T: “Rondine Al Nido”
A: Claire Vaye Watkins
B: Battleborn, 2012
A: There’s a lot to learn from this story, on a lot of
levels. Here I’ll just point out the first
moment that struck me hard during my first read through. (Please note that I read this on a Kindle, which
I love, but which makes citing awkward.)
The passage is towards the beginning of the story (Loc 604). Watkins lists three concrete things that the
protagonist remembers doing that she (the protagonist) thinks are morally
questionable. After the concrete list,
we get this transition to the figurative, “These she’ll have been carrying since
girlhood like very small stones in her pocket.”
The next sentence brings us back to the context of the story: “The
sensible man will be waiting.” And the
final sentence, of both the paragraph and the first section of the story, moves
us to the abstract and philosophical, “Who can say why we offer the parts of
ourselves we do, and when?” In this
beautiful paragraph, Watkins moves from a list of concrete and literal memories
to a figurative description of these memories, reminds us of the story’s plot
context, and ends with an abstract, philosophical question.
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