Short story: “The Meat Suit”

“The Meat Suit,” by Garth Risk Hallberg

Appeared April 25th, 2017 in Granta 139: Best of Young American Novelists 3 (online here)

5875 words

Great last line.

In the second section, “middle-school dance” stopped me short because, despite several other hints to the character’s age, I was picturing her quite a bit older than fourteen (and I think she’s actually more like thirteen). There’s no attempt to channel the character’s voice the way a third-person YA novel would, and for that reason the narration feels a little disembodied to me. In fact, Jolie doesn’t get much of a voice at all, apart from her very real conversation with Precious.