The Short Story by Adam Smith

This story by Adam Smith is about a young woman named Margaret who wants to get out from under her stifling and worrisome adopted mother. Lucy Delamar -- the mother -- is beyond terrified of the world after both world wars, the shock of being robbed in the middle of the night and finding her husband gone forever. The fear she feels from these events pervades her entire life and affects the way Margaret lives her life. Young and knowing little of life, the now 15 year old girl looks for a way to liven up her life by disobeying her mother and making a friend. Unfortunately for her, she made the exact wrong friend; Marcus never speaks an unkind word to her but shows his true colors to her unknowingly. Margaret is then forced to look at what she believes and admit to her guardian that the world is, indeed, every bit as dangerous as Lucy has always told her.

I enjoyed reading the back story in the beginning of the piece. Smith manages to give plenty of information without making the beginning of the story expository. I felt like I was reading the real plot, and when there was a time skip and the real story started, I wasn't offended or jarred out of the story. The transition worked very well. Another aspect of this particular story that I liked was the time period. It's not far enough in the past that the story becomes genre on principle. It's not set during a major historic event; instead, the story is affected by the wars in a way that makes sense. Lucy's questions about Marcus wearing a radio or looking like a German was wonderful, and I thought it was very interesting that Lucy was so afraid of these far fetched things in every day life -- wolves don't need to be exotic to be dangerous.

Unfortunately, where I wasn't jarred from the story by the time skip, I had a hard time enjoying the story when things kept changing structurally. For example, Margaret suddenly became Margarite, Lucy's last name switched from Delamar to Melamar, and Lucy's flat suddenly moved to a completely different street. Technically, these things aren't part of the story itself, but they did make me as a reader have to regard the story as text on a page instead of a riveting story.