An assistant art director waits for test results in a hospital to find out if his severely disabled son has cystic fibrosis. David Means takes us through the man’s thoughts on this profoundly stressful experience.
Real cheerer-upper, eh? A River in Egypt was quite a good story. Means gives the reader a vivid snapshot of a day in the life of this poor man and the story is easy to read despite the extra-long sentences - usually they make for some rather laborious re-reading (flashbacks to Joseph Conrad - the horror!).
Still, I can’t shake the impression that this is like an advanced creative writing student’s story, one step up from writing about how grandma’s death made you saaaaad. That said, I don’t know anything about David Means and he might well have experience of the things his story is about, but it all feels self-consciously Literary and abstract, like a thought exercise. A well-written one but not a very moving or memorable one either.
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