Semplica Girl Diaries Reaction

Saunders' The Semplica Girl Diaries deals with a father's struggle to make his family happy. He feels the pressure of "limitations" that result from his lack of money and privilege. Attending the birthday party of his daughter's friend makes him depressed because of the extreme wealth on display at the other family's home. It's all relative in this story. The father feels his own middle to lower-class lifestyle is lacking in relation to the lifestyle of a much wealthier family. Lily, the narrator's youngest daughter, feels this the most. Lily seems ingrained to think that not having a disposable income means your life is deficient and not worth living. Why does she feel this way? Saunders thinks that society is responsible for glamorizing wealth and making people always aware of how others perceive them. More than anything else, money reminds us of who we are.

I found this story more engaging than most of the other Saunders' stories. Coming in at sixty pages, The Semplica Girl Diaries is more novella than short fiction. The narrator's voice was immediately engaging for me. Some of Saunders' other stories feel like they're coming straight from the mind of a psychopath. This story did not feel like this. The voice is clear and deliberate. The story is told in the form of journal entries that the father has jotted down before going to bed. He hopes to preserve his experiences for future readers. From what I can tell, the father is down to earth family man whose main wish is to make his family happy. When he wins ten grand on a scratch ticket, he decides to invest this money into his yard, buying a pond, hot tub, flowers, and three girls from Asia and Africa tied together by a microline inserted into their heads. In this fictional world, buying live humans a yard ornaments is the latest trend. The semplica girl element elevates this story to sci-fi and adds some horror to the mix. It's unsettling how comfortable the narrator is with using other human beings as decorations on his lawn.

One note on craft. I enjoyed Saunders' prose style in this story. He omits the use of "to be" verbs and words like "the" and "a". The result is a more minimalist story that makes it feel more like reading someone's journal. It's a very personal story that divulges the narrator's emotional and intellectual activities often. Another thing I appreciate about the journal format is the use of dates to separate the story into consumable chunks.

This story made me think about how identity is formed by other's perceptions. Especially in American culture, one's life is judged in relation to the lives of others. This is a sad truth that can invade your mind consume your activity. It can turn your life into a struggle to create meaningless status. This is the message I extracted from this story.