story: “The Lover”

author: Joy Williams

year: Originally published in 1973 in Esquire 

where: Abu Dhabi

note: I’ve been reading Joan Silber’s non-ficiton book The Art of  Time in Fiction, which explores the various ways writers convey the passage of time in their stories, and maybe that is why I am so mesmerized by how Williams’ moves through months and years in this story. She does it multiple ways in different parts of the narrative!

a line: “She and the man travel all over the South in his white convertible. The girl brings dolls and sandals and sugar animals back to the child. Sometimes the child travels with them.’”

theme(s): Love, Motherhood, Insomnia