{"id":12132,"date":"2010-07-27T16:37:12","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T20:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=12132"},"modified":"2016-06-17T13:26:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T17:26:25","slug":"tea-obreht-blue-water-djinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/07\/27\/tea-obreht-blue-water-djinn\/","title":{"rendered":"T\u00e9a Obreht: “Blue Water Djinn”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Blue Water Djinn\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby T\u00e9a Obreht<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the August 2, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/p>\n
Last year Obreht had a snippet of her forthcoming novel published in the debut fiction issue.\u00a0She’s very young, so that is an impressive feat, but I’m afraid I didn’t really like her work.\u00a0I wasn’t really looking forward to reading “Blue Water Djinn,” and I put it off through the week.\u00a0 While it wasn’t my favorite story, I was swept up when I finally began it.\u00a0Here’s its opening sentence.<\/p>\n
By the time the boy climbs out of bed and goes outside, they are already searching for the Frenchman, a guest of the hotel, whose clothing has been spotted adrift in the kelp-logged surf by one of the local fisherman.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The boy’s name is Jack.\u00a0His mother is part of the management of this hotel on the shore of the Red Sea.\u00a0After finding the clothing of the Frenchman, the rest of the hotel employees, all of whom Jack knows, are searching for some clue as to the Frenchman’s whereabouts.\u00a0They fear the worst, but since strange but innocuous things happen in large hotels, they want to search every corner before involving the police.<\/p>\n
Our third person narrator closely follows Jack, but in that opening sentence\u00a0the present tense combined with “already” makes the Jack’s\u00a0involvement in the disappearance of the Frenchman suspect.\u00a0Why already, especially when this is not a reminiscence?\u00a0One of the strengths of this story is how well Obreht inserts such ambiguity in otherwise straightforward sentences.\u00a0In last year’s offering, Obreht’s writing felt over-edited and a bit stilted, but this piece, though contemplative, felt\u00a0immediate.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I’m finding as I try to write this review that there aren’t many obvious quotable passages.\u00a0From what I can tell, there are two reasons: first, when I read it I was very involved in the story and didn’t take the time to underline passages that stood out.\u00a0Second, even after going through it, the sentences are worker sentences.\u00a0They don’t get in the way, yet they are beautiful and intricate in their technical aspects.\u00a0They work to tell the story, to set the tone, pace, and mood.\u00a0To pull them out of context just to quote them here seems wrong.<\/p>\n
But let me give a slight introduction to the story, which is actually quite simple.\u00a0Much of the first part we’re going with Jack from place to place as he watches the employees look for the Frenchman.\u00a0His curiosity is infectious.\u00a0We feel that he knows something but that he is naive enough to not fully understand.\u00a0His curiosity is the type of curiosity\u00a0a child\u00a0might feel toward\u00a0something mystical, yet the setting is perfectly realistic and the Frenchman’s disappearance has all the appearances of a simple drowning.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to give away the story, which I very much enjoyed.\u00a0As much as I enjoyed the story, though, my real appreciation was in the craftsmanship. I felt like John, to an extent.\u00a0I felt his innocent wonder.\u00a0This short story quickly made Obreht an author I want to watch — her first book will be out next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker story is T\u00e9a Obreht’s “Blue Water Djinn.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"T\u00e9a Obreht: \"Blue Water Djinn\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,253],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-12132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-tea-obreht","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Blue-Water-Djinn.jpg?fit=807%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-39G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18713,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132\/revisions\/18713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12132"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}