One reason I really enjoyed this story was the novelty of the perspective; I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in second person before. “Once in a Lifetime” seemed a blend of second person and first person, with Hema both speaking as if to Kaushik and also narrating her own internal thoughts. After I finished the story, I took time to consider why Lahiri made this choice, instead of going with a more conventional point of view. The only conclusion I could reach is that the frame of a direct address of a young girl to an older boy she has a crush on is an indict way of dealing with several deeper, more serious topics (sickness, acculturation, family dynamics, etc) through the prism of a young girl’s experience of them. These issues could be too weighty to be dealt with directly without becoming sentimental.
In relation to the Davis essay, when the narrator cries, I feel her emotion is genuine and touching enough to truly move, rather than a trite gesture in the context of a technically “clever,” rather than emotionally meaningful, story. The tears here are not beautiful, they are human, above all. The sensory imagery in this passage emphasizes this: “…I began to cry. At first the tears fell silently, sliding over my nearly frozen face…becoming ugly in front of you, my nose running in the cold, my eyes turning red.” The moment is a powerful mixture of visual and tactile imagery, familiar to anyone (everyone) who has cried unexpectedly in the company of someone they don’t know well. The gesture of tears is a mixture of emotions like anger, fear, shock, and sadness, rather than one-toned. The lack of reaction from Kaushik in the face of such a serious revelation and accompanying response also keeps the moment from being overdone or sentimental.
If you're interested in 2d person, Maile Meloy's "Ranch Girl," also in your anthology, is another example.
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