The Yellow :)

        I think I need one of those take-me-out-of-reality-for-a-while moments like the one in The Yellow, by Samantha Hunt. Well, not exactly like THAT one. Not that I have a family, a house and a vacuum cleaner, but sometimes I also want out of my life. Not really “out” as in "bye bye world," but “out” in a way that I want "out" of my situation. So yeah, I need one of those moments or an exciting happening that would temporarily take me out of my own shoes.

        The story is about a man, Roy, who runs over someone's family dog while he's absent mindedly driving. Having a conscience and not wanting to leave the dog, he retrieves it from under his car. With the dog - who he later finds out is called, Curtains - in his arms, he starts going house to house trying to find the owner. He finds the owner, Suzanne, and they go on a naughty little adventure of their own.

        Suzanne is a wife and a mother of 3 who at that moment, was home alone. She needed time alone to relieve herself of all the pent up feelings she had, so her husband took their children to the movies while she stayed at home.

        Of course Roy had some issues of his own too. Like, he's 42 years old, is jobless, and had just moved back into his parents' house. And one night decides to paint the walls of his basement chateau yellow, as a symbol of change.

        I just hope that the author played around with "yellow" more. He only mentioned it in the story in the beginning and in the end, wasn’t really a theme in the story.

        There wasn’t much dialogue in the story, which I liked. If I was there in the scenes, I’d imagine everything to be quiet and sensual: no words, all action. The author described the scenes really well, together with imagery such as: “he could smell the dust still in the rug—salt and sand and dried skin from her kids, her husband, her now dead dog.” I also liked that the story 

        Samanthat Hunt is 39 years old and lives in New York City. She has written numerous short stories, as well as books. Her debut book “The Seas”, won the National Book Foundation’s award for writers under 35. And her most recent book “The Invention of Everything Else,” was in the running for the Orange Prize in 2009.

        The Yellow by Samantha Hunt. From The New Yorker, November 29, 2010. [OK, that’s weird. I swear I read the story over the weekend and the date on it was November 22. Now it says November 29.]