A brilliant short story
Dec. 20th, 2010 04:05 pmThe Guardian's latest short story podcast has Helen Dunmore reading Frank O'Connor's My Oedipus Complex, which draws on his own experience, as a small boy, of a father he hardly knew returning from war. This has to be not only one of the wryest and most endearing short stories I know, but one of the best uses of a child narrator. The boy's total lack of sentimentality is vital for a story that, told from an adult viewpoint, might easily turn schmaltzy. I used it with students a lot and I don't think I ever had a class who couldn't relate to it.