I’ve been meaning for some time to write some posts about short stories. Not so much the idea of the short story, but reviews of individual stories themselves, considered as stand-alone works of art instead of as a part of a collection or larger body of work. With tomorrow’s tonight’s launch of Pasha Malla’s first collection, The Withdrawal Method, now seemed like the right time to start. I didn’t know which story to choose, so I emailed Malla, and he suggested “Big City Girls,” which is the piece that he says has been most on his mind since completing the book.

“Big City Girls” is the story of Alex, age seven, who stays home from school on a snow day with his fifth-grader sister and a few of her friends. They’re bored kids, and without much to do after building a snow fort, they retire to the living room to play Clue and have a conversation that eventually turns to sex. Or at least sex in the unknowing way that kids of that age talk about it—“Maybe Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum were having fun with the candlestick, said Shayna…In the Secret Passageway! screamed Heather”—which is to say with imprecision and anxiety. (more…)