Javier Marias “While the Women Are Sleeping” New Yorker

PLOT: 　　The narrator and his wife Luisa see Viana, a 53-year-old fat man constantly taking a video of Iona, a 23-year-old “girl friend” of his on the beach. Iona behaves as if he was not taking a video. One night the narrator talks with Viana, who says, “I have known Iona since she was 7. When she was 18, we married. The ripe time is over; the decay will begin. I am afraid of the end of my adoration of her and her independence from me. That’s why I persistently take a video of her for memory. I may kill her to keep her as she is.” COMMENT: 　　This is a creepy, weird story. Viana is obsessed that one day he will lose Iona. The writer shows how obsessed Viana is by letting Viana talk his history. The reader will be tired of listening (reading) his mentally strange story. This is not so much a short story as a mystery story. It’s similar to Poe’s work. 　　The writer is a Spanish and the story is translated into English. HINT FOR A SHORT STORY: 　　It may be interesting to write a story in which a “normal” person turns out to be abnormal, and what he thinks “abnormal” turns out to be normal.