The Little Boy

by Mary Gaitskill

From the award-winning, bestselling author of THE MARE

As Mrs Bea Davis waits in the airport for her flight home after a strained visit to her daughter, she notices a bashful-looking little boy and his harried mother. Something about them prompts memories from across her life to flood her mind and overflow, and as she reflects on her childhood, her marriage, and the speed with which her two girls grew up, the lines between past and present blur.

Riveting, strange and beautifully told, this finest of Mary Gaitskill's short stories takes a mundane moment and spins it out into an unforgettable account of the emotional truth of a woman's whole life.

Genres: Short Stories

22 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 21, 2016

About the author

Mary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993 and 2006), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She married writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. As of 2005, she lived in New York City; Gaitskill has previously lived in Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan where she earned her B.A. and won a Hopwood Award. Gaitskill has recounted (in her essay "Revelation") becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 but lapsing after six months.

Reviews

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a little piece of art.
It's slightly disorrientating, as you try to make sense of what is happening now and what are Bea's memories, but it's sort of beautiful and touching.
I'll be re-reading this one inn the future, that's for sure.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was NOT executed well.
For a short read, going into lengths for nothing until the last few paragraphs was really tiring me out and made it really boring.
About 80 per cent of the description was totally unnecessary and the story was just everywhere which really distracted me.
Characterization was really weak.
The ending was bad.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands this short story follows the internal monologue of a lonely widow. Her memories are woven so closely into the here-and-now of the journey that she is taking that she sometimes seems overwhelmed by the past (at one point she is caught out talking to herself). She is on the way back from a visit to one of her daughters, and it's through her relationship with her daughters that her character is evoked, economically and poignantly. As in Moshfegh's novel we come to realise that her marriage was an oppressive one; an encounter with a little boy during her journey brings out a truth about her husband. Sad and touching.

[Luvena · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me awhile to greet into the time lapse, the narrative style and the back the forth - the then and now... but it was beautiful how the author tied it altogether and neatly at the end.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boy
RTC

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of the little boy

I loved the story and would recommend it to all readers beautifully wrote couldn't put it down that is the kid of stories I like

[Malkeet]

Very interesting.