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“Freedom to Move”
by Aysegül Savas
from the July 22, 2024 issue of The New Yorker
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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” text_color=””]I[/fusion_dropcap] like Aysegül Savas’s work, who just published the novel The Anthropologists last week. I’m excited to read it, and I was also excited to get this new story this week. Here is how “Freedom to Move” begins:
I was in Istanbul for a few days and on my way to visit my grandfather. He’d moved in with my father at the beginning of the pandemic because we had been worried about him living alone, in the town by the Black Sea where he’d retired. We’d urged him to come to the city, just for a short time. It had been a wise decision; my grandfather’s health deteriorated rapidly in those months, and his stay became indefinite. He could no longer go out for long walks as he used to, or even remain upright for extended periods.
I will definitely be reading this soon this week (even though I still haven’t read the last issue’s loads of stories). I hope you’ll join in and then comment below with your thoughts!
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I finished this today, and I’m glad it was short. I didn’t dislike it, but I also didn’t get too engaged. But it didn’t feel like the story was particularly invested either. I am sure that isn’t the case, so I’m curious how others felt. I typically like Savas’s work for its subtlety, so I’m primed to think that I’m missing it here.
All that said, I did like the setup: an adult granddaughter is visiting her grandfather in Turkey, and in the process finds herself having a meal with him, with the immigrant woman hired to care for him, and with the woman’s daughter. This is a prime setting for a lot to be going on under the surface, but again I kind of missed it.
It’s funny, but I did actually hold some notion that I’d be able to keep up with most of what’s going on here, more than TNY… Then with all the books I’m working on, comes over 70 columns of TNY Fiction all at once, and okay I give up, I haven’t got time for everything, and I hope to read more about whether anyone thinks any of them is an absolute must read and why I still have a notion to get to this week’s selection, and if I come back I’ll bring the Harpers along, too.
What is there to say
about this story?
It’s a situation,
people accommodating
to others’ needs, and not
especially good for anyone.
I’ve known that sort of thing.
The author interview seems to say enough without my messing with it.
Did bring the story in Harper’s August issue. “Lovefool”, by Andrew Martin. He’s a young writer with a novel, _Early Work_ , and a story collection _Cool For America_ , which got the Kirkus star.
“Lovefool” is twice as long as “Freedom To Move”. Otherwise not so different. Narrator is a young man who elaborates the history of his relationships with his brother and his brother’s wife (then ex-wife), … , all well and fully explained, but only from his POV. It’s a long story. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read it, but take a look at this first:
There’s this other thing I got from the library sale, in spite of my excessively late arrival (3rd day, 15 mins after opening!):
A multi-author short story anthology dated 1927, called _Samples: A Collection of Short Stories_ .
A little digging finds this is one of an annual series in the 1920s, other volumes called: _Aces_ , _More Aces_ , and _Trumps_ (but good luck sorting the search results from that last!).
Contents of _Samples_:
p:
3. George Ade: Tall-Stoy
8. Sherwood Anderson: The Man’s
Story
32. Barry Benefield: Simply Sugar Pie
45. Konrad Bercovici: Muzio
65. Louis Bromfield: Let’s Go to
Hinky-Dink’s
86. Dorothy Canfield: Flowers of the
Soul
97. Willa Cather: Coming Aphrodite!
149. Theodore Dreiser: A Doer of the
Word
174. Edna Ferber: Every Other
Thursday
203. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Dance
223. Zona Gape: Annie Laurie
243. John Galsworthy: Told by the
Schoolmaster
256. Sam Hellman: Rerouting Rufe
280. Ernest Hemingway: My Old Man
298. Fannie Hurst: Madagascar
329. Mary Roberts Rinehart:
Cynara: The Sculptor
350. G. B. Stern: The Island Game
369. Thyra Samter Winslow: All the
Way Up
389. Elinor Wylie: The Applewood
Chair
406. end
On the basis of having now read the first 6 stories, plus a couple I read long ago, *and looked at contents list, I’m confident that this is a *good ‘Sample’. Next NYer comes tomorrow. I’ll try to take time out for the story.
From this year’s story annuals, would we be able to predict the 5 or 6 authors that would be familiar to most 2121 readers who picked up a 2024 SS annual, much as I picked up this 1927 annual 97 yrs later?
Of the few famous names in the 1927 issue, neither Sherwood Anderson nor Ernest Hemingway was nearly as famous as they became, while Theodore Dreiser, John Galsworthy, Willa Cather, and even young F Scott, were already very well known. Most other names I don’t or scarcely know.
After the brief comic short (about a bookseller trying to sell to a guy who, hasn’t heard of “Tall-Stoy”), the next few stories are still worthy of anthology nearly a hundred years later, including those now little known.
Looking at the contents of related 1924 and 1925 volumes, 8 or 10 of the same authors (famous and not) appeared in each. I’d pick ’em up if I saw them.
.
This story seems mostly to be about separation and the gradual distancing of people in a family – father and son, grandchild and grandparent. When you were a child they were your whole world. Aging, independence, moving out into the world, the characters inevitably move farther away from each other – in much the way the ever-expanding universe moves the stars and planets further apart. As a contrast, the young girl hasn’t begun to experience that stage yet and we clearly see is she is still orbiting very close to her mother. Kind of sad but , hey, that’s life in the big city.
Other themes too – the dynamics of class as it operates between care-giver and employer. The author has the reader see/feel this from the caregivers perspective.
Delicately observed and written.