“Offside Constantly”
by Camille Bordas
from the June 28, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
Camille Bordas moved from France to the United States in 2012 and has since been writing in English. That’s impressive. Since 2016 she has been publishing in The New Yorker, and “Offside Constantly” will be her fifth story to appear in the magazine. In 2018 she published her first English-language novel, How to Behave in a Crowd. I could be missing it, but I don’t see a new book on the horizon. I’m okay with that! I love it when we get a regular supply of short stories, and Bordas’s work is interesting. This one looks really good too. Here is a taste:
I read a lot about famous people and how they died. Or just what diseases they had. I started with actors and writers, but now I’m down to congressmen. Painters, too, I read a lot about, but only because my brother has so many books about them. (Is it “has” or “had”? The brother is gone, but the books are still here.) My brother loved painters, paintings. Me, I don’t really know what to do with a painting, how long I’m supposed to look at it. I prefer movies. Before I watch a movie, I check how long it will last.
Please let me know what you thought of the story below!
This is mostly a conventional story, nicely narrated, with a wry undertone. Until we get to where the one girl beats up the other girl. That is really jarring. What is that all about? What does it have to do with narcolepsy? More broadly, what is the whole story all about? Help me out. I’m looking for guidance.
For me the key to this story is the mother’s comment to her daughter that wanting to be a man is different from being a man. And that becomes juxtaposed with the daughter’s discussion with another girl who has a list of people she wants beat up badly but doesn’t know how it would be to actually beat them up. The daughter’s self image is fragile after she has lost her older brother, who was her best friend. The daughter isn’t happy with how her teeth look even though they resemble the teeth of a famous lady, and doesn’t seem to mind getting them knocked out in order try out a new look. She is lost and sad without a protector or anyone who cares about her.
Bordas is probing the tension between relying on a protector versus creating one’s own identity and how capricious becoming famous or remaining a nobody actually is. The first person voice seems very real as the young woman tries to make sense of how she should look, how she should be and what she should do.
It seems like kind of Bildingsroman about a young lady looking at the famous and the nobodies from the outside from being different and therefore excluded rather than included.
Wish other people who read the story would comment.
I think when someone you love dies, your never the same. Your always offside constantly. Puberty is challenging time to suffer a loss, especially a sibling you were attached to. Bordas cast of players around a grief stricken girl are well developed.. I liked this story…
The ending- wow. Still mulling this story over. I love the diverticulitis woman character. Seems to give her better advice than her mother. Also, after the beat down, she gets to be in the hospital for awhile kinda like her brother being the sick one. And that’s where something in her seems to shift…mo longer wants to read the obits. And that character of Victoria… so much packed in here.
A new short story is out in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/colorin-colorado-fiction-camille-bordas
And it’s another perfect short story, this time also ruminating about what a short story needs to be successful, including even a recipe, maybe?