I cried.Ĭollected in How to Breathe Underwater, Viking, 2004. There is revenge, guilt and, unexpectedly, hope, all woven together with dexterity and panache. He hates her because of what happened “last November”, which we quickly learnt involved his girlfriend, Isabel, drowning after a car crash. The girl is the “canker of her brother Sage’s life”. But if that sounds rosy, the set up is anything but. ‘The Isabel Fish’ is the title story in How to Breathe Underwater in all but name: a teenage girl needs to learn how to breathe underwater in preparation for a family holiday to St Maarten in the Dutch Virgin Islands so her parents sign her and her brother up for scuba lessons in the local Y pool. Again, it was hard to narrow my choice – writing this I’m worrying I cheated this entire exercise, picking collections rather than stories – but perhaps it doesn’t matter when each story is so good. Where was Julie Orringer when I was “coming of age” like most of the characters in her stories? It’s not that I’d have been able to relate to all their predicaments – I still don’t know what the ‘Devvies and Sallies’ are that Tessa is trying not to take while babysitting her little niece in ‘Care’ – but it might have been enough knowing those characters were out there. Leave a comment ‘The Isabel Fish’ by Julie Orringer Collected in How to Breathe Underwater, Knopf, 2003, which is now available as a Vintage Contemporary, 2005 Posted on NovemNovemby Jonathan Gibbs Posted in Gemma Seltzer Tagged Julie Orringer. Published in the Paris Review, Winter, 2000, and available to subscribers to read here. But there’s a final, redemptive scene in which her understanding of people, her hopefulness, is rewarded.
Cruel girls tease her in their ballroom dancing class, they bully her in and out of school. A skirt is better for dancing.” The tone is hopeful but we soon realise the narrator writes to a younger version of herself, guiding her through her very painful pre-teen years. It opens with: “On Wednesdays wear a skirt. In Note to Sixth-Grade Self, the weather is warm and the sky is bright.
Nine stories of people learning to navigate life, loss and relationships, learning how to breathe underwater. All the stories explore the moments of transition between childhood and adulthood, family and independence. This whole collection by Julie Orringer is wonderful.
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