Not for Long Stories

The crazy interactions between Lucero and Aurora that occur in "Aurora" made me realize that they are a perfect demonstration of an ironic relationship, and furthermore that Lucero himself is an almost entirely ironic character. Lucero mentions that he wants a 'real' relationship with Aurora, but doesn't understand that what he thinks that means couldn't be further from the truth. When he and Aurora overhear his upstairs neighbors yelling at each other, he declares that "they're yelling because they're in love". Lucero is completely unaware of the irony of his desire to go back to the 'good old days' when he had a 'better relationship' with Aurora, back when they would break into apartments for fun. Their disturbing tolerance, and even expectation, of abuse in their relationship further demonstrates how twisted they are together. He tells us, "We hurt each other too well to let it drop", which clues us in to their tw...

From all of Moore's stories so far, the one that stuck out for me was the concise yet detailed story "The Kid's Guide to Divorce". I found the tone and use of second-person perspective in this story made it feel more personal than in the others. It felt like less of a structured story and more of a series of thoughts and observations the child is narrating to themselves in real time. We're given a direct insight into how they feel and think throughout their interactions with their mother, and all in a way that is supposed to make us feel involved in their story. A random thought I had was that this story could be treated like one of those stories narrated to you while your eyes are closed so you can envision it yourself, since you can put some variation of "Now imagine that..." in front of nearly every sentence in the story. It just has that sort of vibe, like it's supposed to be seen and experienced through your own eyes and not through those of the...