“Sun Valley,” Cecilia Stefānescu
“Sun Valley” is an intriguing narrative that follows a young boy after he has found the corpse of a woman in the basement of his friend’s apartment complex, or so the reader is led to believe. As the story develops, the point of view shifts back and forth from that of Sal as a young boy to that of Sal as an adult, and the changes in perspective intertwine to become one fluid narrative that leads the story to end where it began–with Sal viewing the corpse, but now the reader can’t be sure if it is young Sal or old Sal that is seeing it, or if it was old Sal who had originally seen it, or if it was young Sal through his mind’s eye. Although the translation could be better–there were many mistakes and word choices that I found curious at best, inept at worst–it can easily be seen why Stefānescu is seen as one of Romania’s up-and-coming writers.
“Moon Lake,” Eudora Welty
I really didn’t realize how well these two books’ titles fit together until right this minute when I sat down to write about Welty’s “Moon Lake”, which is one of her most famous short stories published in book form. It details the life of a girls’ summer camp through the last few days, and deals with the intricacies of class division, life, and death all through the perspectives of the young girls. Although it is never explicitly mentioned, one can presume that the girls are aged around 10, and their unique perspectives show the readers a different side of things from that which we would normally read.