“The Rivals”
by Andrea Lee
from the January 4 & 11, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
The first fiction of the new year is Andrea Lee’s “The Rivals.” Lee’s most recent New Yorker fiction was published last year, when we got “The Children” in the 2019 summer fiction issue. Those who commented on this site seemed to like that story, so let’s hope that “The Rivals” gets us to a great start to 2021!
Here is how “The Rivals” begins:
When Floristella catches sight of Pianon on the Red House veranda — the side that overlooks Madame Rose Rakotomalala’s jackfruit tree — he gives a martial bellow, charges down the garden path, and attacks his neighbor with a walking stick. And though the two old Italian men, both well over seventy, are ludicrous combatants — Floristella, a diabetic, is ponderously fat, while tall Pianon is skeletal from annual bouts of malaria, so that their skirmish suggests a clash between Falstaff and Ichabod Crane — their energy and passion run high, and no one who witnesses the incident feels inclined to laugh.
Now I think that is a fun way to begin!
I hope this post finds all of you well, wherever you are, and that we can look forward to 2021 with hope. My best to you as 2020 comes to a close.
I enjoyed this story. Conventional, but well done and good characters and good incidents. Worthy of Peter Taylor or Carson McCuller.
I didn’t detect any subsurface elements, did you?
Perhaps one meta-idea: Between the rivals, who won and who lost? Even deeper: who was the story about? Who was the main character? We would say one of the two western men. But maybe we should focus on the native woman. A post colonial view.
I enjoyed it thoroughly. Sure conventional but well-done. Satisfying. I definitely think if there has to be a “winner” it is the native woman.
The social/cultural atmosphere in this story seemed to be presented in such a way that I could practically feel it. That was good, and the plot of the story had an interesting kind of morality tale flavor that I thought was more amusing than heavy-handed, which I liked.
One complaint, though: I don’t like when authors write in one language, but drop in words and phrases from other languages. Three other languages, in this story, and none that I know beyond a few words. What does the author think a reader is going to experience when they come across language they don’t understand, embedded in a story supposedly in a language they do understand? Does she really want the reader to stop the flow of reading, and stare at the word(s), trying to puzzle out a meaning from context? Does she think the reader should drop the story entirely and go find the meaning on the internet? Or what? It is very annoying, to me.
Worse, sometimes the meanings are explained, but whether any given instance is translated seems completely random. Or the reason for the choice of another language is obscure. For example, why “château d’eau” instead of “water tank”? Yes, I know, “château d’eau” is prettier, but it also made me stop reading to try to figure out what was meant.
Another clunky and weird thing is when a character mostly speaks in English (when we know they actually would be speaking in some other language) but suddenly switches to, say, Italian. Huh?
Okay, I’ll stop ranting about this pet peeve now. In spite of the language issue, I really did enjoy the story, overall.
I like the way this story carried me along, revealed its characters, and drew a picture of life in this particular place. We saw, to varying degrees, the lives of the distinct groups who lived there: the rich Italian couple for whom it is a summer home, the retired refugees, the local working people, and the one-of-a-kind Noelline. I see two plots here: the obvious one, involving the thoughts and emotions of the two old men, and the more opaque happenings underlying it, between Noelline and the rest of her community. By the end of the story, the more interesting rivalry was not between the two men, but between Noelline and the other native women. For the men, it was something of a draw; but Noelline was the clear winner in her contest.
I’m wondering about a comment I submitted. It was a few days ago. Wondering if it got lost or rejected?
Hi Callie, sorry about that! It was in the spam folder for some reason (I didn’t put it there!), so I had to go mark it as not spam. It is now above.
Thanks!
I was absorbed by this story. But in its formality and and remoteness I felt there was something stilted and off-putting. Maybe it’s because the filter of the story is in some way Shay, who herself seems remote–remote from her place of origin; neither is she Italian nor a resident of the island. There are many layers of distance. Her wealth, her beauty and the poise she has consciously developed, which insures that no one really confides in her. And the hero of the story? Although she wins in the end, over her lovers and her peers and the gossips–isn’t she seen from so far a distance that she is in the end a cipher?
The comments above are far kinder than I would have expect. Where is David when we need him? I thought this not just conventional but predictable, derivative, and also the kind of light touristic fiction which Euro-Americans can enjoy as they complain about not getting to travel during COVID. The entire plot feels cribbed from thousands of other stories of how economically disadvantaged colonized people, often servants, leverage their erotic allure to wealthy westerners. The style is breezy enough, but there is never anything interesting stylistically and, per one comment above, there’s not much subtext here.
Avery W, good insights. It seemed inevitable that Noelline would be a cipher; the contingencies of her life and culture aren’t fully knowable to someone outside that culture. The competing men are rather two-dimensional. So it would have been nice to have someone in the story with a bit more depth.
Ken, some day I will have read enough short stories to share your ennui. I imagine it’s stories like this that will get me there; if so, I can’t complain!