“When She Is Old and I Am Famous” by Julie Orringer
I love Mira, the narrator. She’s alive on the page, and she couldn’t be more annoyed with her stupid scene-stealing cousin: “There are certain things I can never abide: lack of food, lack of sleep and Aïda.” All the same, Aïda is family, and Mira doesn’t want her to die or anything. She just wants her to, you know, flash her shapely gams somewhere else. Orringer gets us so close to Mira that we totally understand how Mira could observe a family member’s emotional weirdness and not really care to find out more: “There are many things I would ask [Aïda] if only we liked each other better.” What a brutal conditional clause.
(from the excellently titled The Paris Review Book of People with Problems)
