Alice Munro: "Jakarta"
The story in Saturday Night is called "Jakarta" and the cover promised "Politics, Disappearances, Sex" or something equally tantallizing. Much to my surprise I didn't want to read the story right away, I browsed the magazine, and methodically surveyed all the other articles which might be of interest...and then I read them first. I wanted to savour this story.
When I had finished with everything else, I started to read "Jakarta". I was disappointed, the story opened with a dialogue between two women on a beach. I couldn't get my bearings: was the beach in Indonesia? [as the title suggests] or Vancouver? [as the text implies], and who are all these people the women keep discussing?, I couldn't keep them straight in my mind. After a few pages, I put the story down and left it for a couple of weeks.
Coming back to the story, I picked up where I had left off. If I had been disoriented during my initial reading, I had forgotten so much during my hiatus that I was now totally lost. Fortunately, I came to a scene where one right-wing character finds himself engaging in a debate with a group of left-wingers. [Note: I think that left and right wing are overy simplistc and insufficient descriptions of political philosophies, but as a for of shorthand, they will suffice]. This is a scene which connected. Without choosing sides, Munro accurately described the dynamics of discussions which I had found myself being drawn into more times than I care to remember.
Having achieved an emotional connection to part of the story, I found it much easier to keep going. And I found elements of Munro's style which drew me to her writing in the first place. There are scenes where she demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of human behaviour and conveys it in her characteristic low key, but completely accurate, manner.
This isn't the best story Munro has penned, but it's enough to keep this reader satisfied for a while anyway.