“Windmills” by Elizabeth Strout is set in the same universe as the previous story in this collection, and once again Lucy Barton is a central character even though she is far away in New York. She really seems to have left an impact on this town and its inhabitants, and it will be very exciting when (and if) we finally meet her in one of these stories.

This story, however, focused on a high school counselor named Patty. I know in these blog posts we are supposed to talk about craft and what we can learn from the author, which I will do, but if I had read this story in a workshop rather than in a published text, I probably would have made comments about the believability of the characters. Lila, in particular, was a character I did not find to be believable. Her outburst and attacks on Patty were unbelievable to me. Lila didn’t seem like a real character who reacted in a real human way. When I was in high school, there were certainly outbursts, fights, disrespect towards teachers, but this felt contrived and fake to me. Then, Lila’s return to her office when she breaks down and cries because someone is too nice to her — that felt too easy. If someone has enough pent-up aggression and anger to have an outburst like that for really no reason, a simple apology and a claim that they’re “tired” isn’t going to cut it. I also don’t believe that someone who is as standoffish as Lila would immediately open up to the high school guidance counselor about how much she hates her aunt. It was a pretty important aspect of the story, and I wasn’t buying it.

I did like all of the little things that were going on in the story that added up to making Patty struggle with her life. She’s overweight and self-conscious about it; it’s a little detail but adds a complexity to her character. She has a bad relationship with her mom. Her husband died of cancer. She’s in love with a married man who is old enough to be her father. I really liked the way that Strout revealed that Charlie is married. It wasn’t until several paragraphs into meeting him that Patty mentions his wife, and it’s only to criticize her. That seemed very natural since Patty would already know that detail, but it needed to be conveyed somehow to the reader. I thought that was really well done. There were a lot of great details in the story that really created this world, like the types of groceries and the “hang in there” poster.