Amorometer

by Kelly Luce, Jill Meyers (Introduction)

“Amorometer" by Kelly Luce is a "story of mistaken identity, the hunger for the extraordinary, and the capacity to love," writes Jill Meyers, Co-director of A Strange Object, in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "In this story, Aya Kawaguchi receives a letter that alters the direction of her life. The letter is from Shinji Oeda, a retired professor who’s seeking a former student. Decades ago, this student, Aya Kawaguchi, scored the highest of any test subject in his university-backed experiments on 'lovingcapacity,' or the potential to love. He hopes our Aya in Iida, Japan, is this student. She allows him this hope." About the Kelly Luce grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Crazyhorse, the Kenyon Review, and the Southern Review. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and Austin, Texas, where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. This is her first book. About the Guest A Strange Object is a small press and literary collective established in 2012 and based in Austin, Texas. A\SO believes in surprising, wild-hearted fiction, diverse voices, and good design across all platforms. Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is A Strange Object’s first book. Learn more at astrangeobject.com. About the Electric Literature is an independent publisher working to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction, accompanied by a Single Sentence Animation. Single Sentence Animations are creative the author chooses a favorite sentence and we commission an artist to interpret it. Stay connected with us through email, Facebook, and Twitter, and find previous Electric Literature picks in the Recommended Reading archives.

Genres: Short Stories

21 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 2013

About the author

Kelly Luce is the author of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (A Strange Object, 2013), which won Foreword Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction, and the novel Pull Me Under (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) a Book of the Month selection and one of Elle's 33 Best Books of 2016. She grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years.

Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross Foundation, Sozopol Fiction Seminars, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Salon, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Sun, and other publications. She received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin in 2015. She is the editor of Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Commuter and was a 2016-17 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives in an old grist mill in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Twitter: @lucekel

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt a bit like an intended homage to Haruki Murakami, but it didn't really do it for me.

A bored housewife receives a letter which was intended for another woman of the same name. A lonely, retired professor is seeking a former student, whom, he claims, decades before tested unusually high on an experimental device designed to measure a person's capacity to love. The housewife is intrigued. What if she was this extraordinary woman?