Janet Moore is an English professor with an underachieving husband, a mentally ill son, a plagiarizing student and other problems.

(from The Atlantic Monthly, Fiction Issue 2006)

I don’t know, the mundane problems of English professors and writers don’t count for much with me. Especially when their struggles are served up as metaphors, or, worse, as things to be metaphorically delved into. Anyway, getting past that, and admitting it’s a taste issue to begin with, I’ll say this story had deliberately contemplative thing going on which I found a bit too deliberate. It was a rumination on pushing beyond mediocrity and seeing past the easy route and such. Fine. It was a fine story. Well composed. Just not for me. Read the first lil bit here.