Beth Nugent is one of the greatest writers you’ve probably never heard about before this. And it’s easy to understand why: her singular collection of stories, City of Boys, has long been out of print. It was the writer Mary Miller — a short story savant in her own right — who turned me on to Nugent’s collection. I can’t remember now which was the story Mary liked best, but for me, although I love each of the stories in that collection — which is rare, in my experience; there are usually at least one or two skips — it’s ‘At the End of My Life’ that I return to the most often. It’s a story I’ve taught every time I’ve ever taught fiction. I just never tire of it, and none of its magic nor its tragedy ever seem to be drained from it by my constant revisitations. The story anatomizes a significantly fraught relationship between Lizzie, the narrator, and her younger, developmentally challenged brother, Glennie. Lizzie longs to escape her familial predicament, but is waylaid by her love and sense of duty toward Glennie. I find that I’m most drawn to stories where some version of this dynamic is at play; stories that take up questions of obligation, of debt, of what we owe ourselves and one another. Impossible questions, naturally, and this story doesn’t provide anything like an answer. Instead, Nugent leaves us to wonder and wander inside of the place Lizzie is asking these questions from, and she does it in an idiosyncratic, singular style.
First published in City of Boys, Knopf, 1992
A Personal Anthology 