My Last Story

My Last Story is a 1951 short story by Janet Frame. You can read it online here. It begins,

I'm never going to write another story. I don’t like writing stories. I don’t like putting he said she said he did she did, and telling about people, the small dark woman who coughs into a silk handkerchief and says excuse me would you like another soda cracker Mary, and the men with grease all over their clothes and lunch tins in their hands, the Hillside men who get into the tram at four forty-five, and hang on to the straps so the ladies can sit down comfortably, and stare out of the window and you never know what they’re thinking, perhaps about their sons in Standard two, who are going to work at Hillside when it’s time for them to leave school, and that’s called work and earning a living, well I’m not going to write any more stories like that. I’m not going to write about the snow and the curly chrysanthemums peeping out of the snow and the women saying how lovely every cloud has a silver lining, and I’m not going to write about my grandmother sitting in a black dress at the back door and having her photo taken with Dad because he loved her best and Uncle Charlie broke her heart because he drank beer. I’m never going to write another story after this one. This is my last story.

The life story of this author is interesting, as she had a history of repeated admissions to mental hospitals and was saved from a lobotomy when her story collection was published and won an award.

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I won some Happy Mail from CJ:

Have you ever seen such delights? I'm excited about all these. I've never used watercolor crayons before, just as one example, and all these sweet things will be such fun!

There's a cup in the photo at the top of the page. It's a public domain picture from Pixabay, and it's my beverage reference for the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering.