Review of Lydia Davis' "Five Stories"

When I first started reading Lydia Davis' Five Stories, I was surprised by how short her stories were and started questioning her style of writing. After reading The Outing, my opinion on her writing changed and appreciated how short of a dialogue can bring out such strong human emotions. What made The Outing powerful was the imagery of emotions through action that were occurring in the story. When Lydia mentions “An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path”, there was a perception of people involved in these actions however, there were no symbols used to act the events.  The reason The Outing is the most successful of all the stories is because it did not give much detail about where the actions were coming from or why all the events were occurring. The emotions through action forced readers to picture where the direction of the story was heading towards without using imagery. It also made the story realistic for those who have ever been in a similar situation. Through observations of Five Stories, the more detail Lydia Davis added, the less strength the story had. Although The Mice illustrated great descriptions of the household of the narrator, the extra details hurt the opportunity for readers to wonder why the mice are acting the way they were. An example of the unnecessary detail was when the narrator compared the differences between the home and the neighbor’s mice issues; “We are pleased but cannot understand why they do not come into our kitchen where we have straps set”. After reading this excerpt and reading further into the story, one can deduce as to why the mice will not come into the kitchen as compared to the neighbor’s kitchen–the trap. The overly detailed narrator gave too much information to make readers question why the mice are not taking advantage of the mess and made the story felt dragged. Of the Five Stories, The Mice was not the most successful of the other short stories.