I am intending to read and critique a series of short stories to see how they work, and succeed and/or fail. I will examine the whole of the story, including the ending. Fair warning to read the story first, starting here with an unusual story by Peter Carey from 2010.
Peeling – Peter Carey
Meanjin Summer 2010
This is written from the point of view of an elderly male living alone in a room of, perhaps, a boarding house. He tells us of his interest in a woman who lives above him – contemplating her movements, his slow interest in getting to know her, but not too fast. There is a certain creepiness in this attention and voyeurism (the woman is younger and possibly vulnerable). She collects dolls that she de-hairs, pokes their eyes out and paints white. For the first half of this story, I thought it was about getting into the mind of a predator, that the ‘peeling’ of the title was really about him slowly revealing himself to us while he thinks he is exposing and defining the woman. From here, however, Carey twists the narrative as the woman begins to speak and reveal herself to the narrator (much to his annoyance as he desires to reveal her himself). At this point, we find out the woman assists with backyard abortions and this has disturbed her (hence the mutilated, purified dolls). As the narrator disrobes the woman (with her consent), she is peeled away: first clothes, then skin, then gender, then age, then identity as she disintegrates into a tiny shell-like, broken doll.
Carey shows total control of narrative, character, scene, language, as you would expect. If I were writing this story, I would probably have finished it at the half-way mark and made it more about exploration of character, but Carey pushes it further to give it that bizarre twist, and thus an additional metaphorical layer. This does make the reader sit back and consider ‘what does this mean?’ ‘what is he saying?’ but, to me, I thought it was taking it too far – the inherent interest we have in the situation as ‘real’ is wrenched around as we are given further ideas of ‘peeling’, further ‘layers’ that we weren’t expecting.