This Telling - Cheryl Strayed - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Cheryl Strayed

SERIES: Out of Line

GENRE: Short Story.

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A short story about a young girl and what happens to her after she becomes pregnant. Powerful without being over the top. Impressive scope and character development of the protagonist, especially for a story of this length.

Story Synopsis:

1964. Seventeen-year-old Geraldine discovers that she is pregnant but neither her nineteen-year-old boyfriend nor her own family is too pleased about the news. She is sent away to an unwed mothers’ home where she gives up her newborn child for adoption. Her mother is quite worried that Geraldine has “ruined her life.” But life goes on without any major hiccups, until some decades later, Geraldine’s past converges with her present.

This is a standalone short story in the ‘Out of Line’ collection, described on Amazon as “an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women’s empowerment and escape.”

Consider the sheer scope of this story. It is just 34 pages long, so it will take you an hour at the most to complete. But it covers a long time frame, beginning in 1964 and jumping across the years to contemporary time. It also has eighteen chapters, which is quite surprising as most short stories don’t have any chapter divisions. Effectively, these stats should have indicated a story that attempts too much and hence does no justice to its content. But as we all know, every stat has an exception.

Geraldine is the crux of the plot, a woman of her times. Through her character, we get to see how women have been conditioned into thinking about others first and putting themselves last. The writing doesn’t pass any outright comment on the lack of feminism or gender equality. Rather, through Geraldine’s thoughts, words, and actions, we get to see many red flags that are visible only to us. We see how she doesn’t question anyone, nor does she pause to wonder what she wants. Others take decisions for her, and she goes ahead with them without any complaint. To me, this is the brilliance of the story – the way it highlights the historical subservience of women without venturing into overt social commentary.

To a certain extent, this story is also about the adopted child, and about the societal thinking then and now, and about unwed pregnancies, and how only girls were shunned for becoming pregnant outside of marriage, and about the maintenance of “reputation”. But the focal point of the story remains clear – the life of the unwed mother AFTER the pregnancy and adoption.

The ending might leave some of you disappointed. It was not a sad ending, and not a happy ending as well, it was a satisfying ending nonetheless. I loved how the plot stopped just at the right point, which could be called the cusp of change, because it is at that point that Geraldine finally changes. But if you like your stories to end with a neat finish and a bow on top, you might end up wanting more.

This is just a short story, so obviously, some of the subtleties related to the stigma of unwed pregnancies, and the trauma of secret deliveries and forced adoptions are glossed over. These might have been better detailed out in a novel. Then again, there have been quite a few novels on this topic already. In short fiction however, this topic is rarely touched upon, so I am glad to see a short story making this brave attempt.

A chunk of this tale falls under ‘historical fiction’, but at one point, I did begin to wonder if it was only historical. No doubt there is a change between the thinking then and now with respect to unwed pregnancies and abortions, but with some of the US states rescinding women’s rights to abortion, things aren’t necessarily progressing upwards.

All in all, despite the few things the story left unsaid, I loved it much. It offers an interesting character study of a woman who doesn’t even realise how much she had to give up just because of her gender.

This standalone story is a part of the “Out Of Line” collection, and is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers. I have read two more stories from this series: ‘Graceful Burdens’ and ‘Halfway to Free’. All three have been enjoyable experiences. But the remaining four stories aren’t my cup of tea, so my journey with this collection ends here on a high.