“The Strange Case of Rachel K.”

Something I think about more and more is how to convey the most amount of information in the least amount of words; for simplicity, sure, but also for power. The person with the most power always speaks the least, which is what someone with a healthy amount of power once told me, so I trust them, kind of.

Over the weekend I read The Strange Case of Rachel K., a collection of very, very short stories by Rachel Kushner: “The Great Exception,” a story about an explorer with a penchant for hyperbole and a woman named Aloha, “Debouchment,” a story about an argument in a bar, and then the title story, “The Strange Case of Rachel K.,” about a possibly-French zazou dancer and her relationship with a French Nazi. I think I read the entire thing in about twenty minutes, stopped, thought about it, and went back to read the whole book again. The book is so small that every sentence feels like a complete story — like, for example, this aside about a faith healer in “Debouchment:”

“I know God’s deepest secrets,” the faith healer said. He was not a religious man.

I mean. That’s everything you need to know.

In the introduction Kushner mentions that she wishes she could have written an entire book with the same “density and pauses” as this one short story, but I prefer this much more. It felt way, way more powerful to get so much from something so small, possibly because I’m so impatient, but for whatever reason, it just feels satisfying. The power comes from its brevity, I guess.

Another sentence I particularly liked:

Whatever she was or wasn’t, she looked like a liar and he liked liars.

The contradictions!!! “Whatever she was or wasn’t,” this character thinks, as though he’s still sizing Rachel K. up, as though he hadn’t already made up his mind, as though he’s trying to convince himself that he knew she was untrustworthy before he decided he liked her and not the other way around, as though that thought doesn’t show everything about who he is and what their relationship will be. It’s too good.

You can read “The Strange Case of Rachel K.” here and the book is available for sale here.