Hidden Life by Madhuri Vijay - The New Yorker, August 24 issue

[legendsofanus@lemmy.ml]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/51532459

I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn't been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story

I didn't even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It's about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.

The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi's (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt's mentally handicapped daughter...

I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.

It's a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn't a lot of discourse online