Short story: "Family Walls"

look i have opinions

Mar 23

"Family Walls," by Maeve Brennan

Appeared in the New Yorker, March 10th, 1973 (scanned for subscribers here); read by Claire-Louise Bennett on the March 2023 New Yorker Fiction Podcast; also excerpted in The Stinging Fly, January 6th, 2017

A few thousand words?

I loved this. Such seemingly slight incidents can destroy the vibe of a relationship, temporarily, perhaps permanently. We see Hubert both love his wife (or at least show tenderness towards her?) and utterly fail to love her.

Incidentally, despite what Bennett and Treisman say, the title seems quite transparent to me---it can only refer to the figurative walls that have grown up between the couple, and to the literal walls of their two homes. Almost too on the nose!