APPETITE by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (The New Yorker)

　　The first-person narrator is a cook. He wishes to have his payment raised, but fails to ask the manager for the raise. He was not a valedictorian in his school, just one of the many. He is teased by his friend, a taxi driver. An anorexic girl is newly employed for the restaurant. Cooks job is deadly busy. One rainy day, his umbrella is broken and when he is walking all drenched, the anorexic waitress picks him up in her car. She tells a riddle to him. It is about dead pilots in a cabin. At the end of the story she calls him “boy.” He pleases to be called a boy. “‘Pretty boy,’ she said. ‘pretty, pretty boy.’ ‘Really?’ I asked her. ‘Really?’” 　　The author depicts the narrator’s constant depressed feelings so well that the reader easily identifies him/herself with him. He is a loser in his life, just like Charlie Brown in Snoopy. The introductory sentence “Things were not going as I had hoped” symbolizes the whole story. The title, Appetite, is also excellent, because it shows lack of appetite or active attitude on the part of both the cook and the anorexic waitress. The English used in the fiction is not so complicated as in most of other short stories. 　　 （Saïd Sayrafiezadeh was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1968 and grew up in Pittsburgh.He is a writer of plays, essays, and fiction.）

Claire Keegan "Foster" (The New Yorker)

　　A very moving short story. 　　The girl lives temporarily with her uncle’s because her mother is going to have a baby. First she feels awkward and strange in the Kinsellers, but gradually she is impressed by their kind treatment of her. After a month when her mother had a boby, they take her to her home where her mother welcomes her with a new born baby. After a small talk, they are going to leave, when she suddenly misses them. She runs to them and she is smack against and lifted into her uncle’s arms. For a long stretch, he holds her tight. She feels the thumping of her heart, her breaths coming out…. 　　As I read the story, I identified myself with the girl. When she notices that she has worn their lost boy’s clothes, Mr. Kinsella takes her to the sea and talks about his wife’s good-heartedness, importance of silence, and hugs her. It was a touching scene. Mr. Kinsella was such a nice humorous person. The more you read, the more you will see that the Kinsellas treat her as if she were their child. 　　The story is excellent. The last scene consolidates everything written before that. The author seems to have written the story only because she wanted to end the story with the climax phrase, “‘Daddy,’ I keep calling him, keep warning him. ‘Daddy.’”