I haven’t been posting about everything I read lately.  To be honest, the constant updating was a bit tedious and the feedback lukewarm.

But, every once in a while I find something that is just too good not to pass on.  The short story “What Everyone Remembers” by Rahul Kanakia is one of those stories.

This is a good example of fiction that breaks the “rules of writing” successfully.  For example, the protagonist-narrator is largely passive while the other characters take action around her.  Also, most of the story is dialogue.  Lastly, a lot of the information you need to understand the story is established by telling, not showing.*

Yet, this is a well-written, emotionally engaging story nevertheless.  The language is touching, the character interactions natural despite the strangeness of the main character.  I believe these aspects of story-telling are far more important to literary quality than most of the mechanistic advice we typically read in writing blogs and books.   I encourage writers and readers to take a look!

And, once you’ve read it, take a moment to think about how perfectly the title matches the precise boundaries of the story.

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* This final point might be more a consequence of length than style; if Kanakia were to make a novel of it, he might show more.