story: “Thunderstruck”

author: Elizabeth McCracken

year: 2015

where: Father of the Gazelle

note: Novella

a line:  “Laura was more outgoing, so she had to introduce her brother to friends–but once she had her own children she understood comparison was necessary. It was how you discovered their personalities: the light of one child threw the other child into relief, no different from how she, at thirteen, had known what she looked like only by comparing the length of her legs and the color of her hair to her friends and their legs and their hair.”

theme(s):  Fathers and daughters, Americans abroad, loss, brain damage