“The Red Convertible” is narrated by Lyman Lamartine, a member of the Chippewa tribe who lives on a reservation with his family. He tells a story from his recent past about his older halfbrother, Henry. As Lyman tells the story, the year is 1974. Lyman was able to buy a red convertible Oldsmobile with his…
Tag: Summary
Night by Tatyana Tolstaya – Summary
In the Morning ”Night” begins as Mamochka and her retarded adult son, Alexei, wake up in their communal Moscow apartment. Alexei wakes from fantastic dreams filled with dragons, dwarves, and mushrooms, but Mamochka’s rising is much more ordinary: she is occupied with replacing her false teeth, reattaching a hair piece, and clothing her stout frame….
The Last Lovely City – Summary
”The Last Lovely City” is about a widower named Benito Zamora. He is a successful doctor whose wife, Elizabeth, died five months ago; he is struggling with feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. His elderly mother lives in Mexico, near a city where Benito operates two free clinics. As the story opens, Benito has been invited…
Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov – Summary
Shelter from the Storm The story “Gooseberries” begins on a dreary, overcast day as Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin are walking through the countryside. When it starts to rain, Bourkin suggests they go to a nearby friend’s house Anton Chekhov where they can get shelter from the weather. Upon arriving at the mill owned by Aliokhin,…
The Eskimo Connection – Summary
1975 “The Eskimo Connection” begins in the late winter of 1975, when Emiko Toyama, a Nisei poet and widow living in Los Angeles, receives a letter from a young Eskimo prisoner-patient at a federal penitentiary in the Midwest. Alden Ryan Walunga has read one of Emiko’s poems in an old AsianAmerican magazine and wants her…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Summary
In Torcello ”Don’t Look Now,” opens with John, a British tourist in a small town outside of Venice, noticing two elderly twin sisters sitting at a nearby table. He and Laura, his wife, create wild scenarios to describe the sisters and their possible business in Torcello. The couple joke like this for some time, giving…
The Destructors by Graham Greene – Summary
“The Destructors” is about a group of teenage boys who call themselves the Wormsley Common gang, after the area where they live. They meet every day in a parking lot near a part of town that was bombed during World War II. Almost everything in this area is destroyed although one house stands with minimal…
The Country Husband – Summary
”The Country Husband” opens as Francis Weed, a middle-aged family man, is aboard a plane that is making an emergency crash landing in a corn field. When he returns home, his wife, Julia, and their four children are uninterested in his experience. Francis, John Cheever however, feels that he has been given a second chance…
The Challenge by Mario Vargas Llosa – Summary
As the story opens, the narrator, Julian, is sitting at the River Bar with his friends Leon and Briceno. Leonidas, an older man, arrives and joins them. He informs them that Justo (another member of the group) will be fighting the Gimp at the raft that night. When Leonidas leaves, Briceno says that Justo is…
A Boy And His Dog – Short Story – Summary
A Boy and His Dog is narrated by Vic, a teenaged boy who has a telepathic dog named Blood. The story is set in 2024 post-apocalypse America. Rubble, craters, and molten metal mark the landscape. There are two civilizations of survivors – those above ground and those below. Those who live below are called “downunders”….