“A Different Room” by Eric Notaro appeared in Issue 47 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
This story is based on a real situation I heard secondhand. For privacy and respect to those involved, I’ll point out that, aside from the basic premise of holding off on a divorce for staying on the insurance, the characters, situations, and dynamic of the relationship are all fictional. I’m interested in all the ways people fall in and out of love, and how the fragments of those relationships remain or fester. I also try to stay aware of how terrible situations are made all the worse by externalities, such as healthcare. It felt like a perfect way to lock two people into a figurative room together.
What was the most difficult of writing this story?
Trying to depict their crumbling marriage in a way that felt authentic and yet did not hold one signular dramatic cause. It would have been easy to throw in an affair, some dramatic act that severs their ties. The ending was a way to both end on a warmer note but to show that the cracks in this relationship existed long before they married.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
I could recommend a lot more than one, but I’ll try to control myself. For short fiction, I recently enjoyed Vanished: Stories by Karin Lin-Greenburg. It centers on a fictional upstate New York small town around where I grew up. It’s so rare to see that region in literature, and she captures the spirit of the place quite well in my view.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Amor Towles, though I fear I would embarrass myself as he seems like the sort of person who has very refined tastes whereas I am generally easygoing. His characters are often so lively, so I would love to have a conversation with the person who crafted them on the page.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I recently started querying agents for a long historical novel set during the “Anti-Rent War” of 19th century upstate New York. I’ve continued some historical research into the history out of a genuine fascination for the history. I also have a short story collection I have been shopping around for publication and have recently started drafting a play for a friend’s theater company.
Our thanks to Eric for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “A Different Room” here.
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Eric Notaro’s writing has appeared in Border Crossing, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pleiades, and other publications. He lives in New Hampshire.