Currents

Out of all the stories we read in the book I’d have to say one of my favorite was Currents, not just because of the content but how the story was told. Putting the beginning at the end of the story and having it progress backwards is a technique that I haven’t seen before. It is clever and definitely adds uniqueness to the story, much like a film where you see the end and then how the people in the story got to that end point. Except unlike those, the progression is just backwards, not jumping all over the place; it gives the reader a new way to process the content which is rather sad and dark. It eliminates the ability for the reader to be shocked in a way that would ruin the moments after the climax. When reading backward through the story (beginning to end) you hit the moment where the body of the boy is found and everything after that becomes almost moot. It doesn’t matter to you that they want the kids to not fear the water, or that Gary is out drinking single malt. That moment, in the first line of the story is one of the more powerful ones in that it sets the tone for the story, maybe not to all but to those who drink it does. A man alone drinking scotch and staring out at the sea has an issue and then following that you realize it was something bad if the kids are afraid to go swim again. It makes the reader more interested in how the events unfurled that ultimately led to the demise of this boy and the attempt afterwards to find him. By just hitting the reader with the sad reality it allows them to continue on, curious as to what got them to that point. The repetition of before that indicates a briefness to things, that the author doesn’t want to dwell on the small things in the story but wants to make a clear and concise chain of events that lead to Gary drinking alone out on the porch. All in all while it is a sad and tragic tale, the way it is written makes the reader curious as to how it got to that point, while not allowing them to make guesses as to what would happen next.