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07.03.22
I think that we give away our hearts too easily, you know? We're all in such a hurry to get out there and fall in love as soon as we possibly can. Maybe we're missing out. That maybe our hearts would feel so much better if we just kept them inside our chests.
Pang is a short story about a man who's wife breaks up with him. The interesting aspect of the story is the world building: hearts are quite literally given away for your partner to care for.
This review is not spoiler free!
You can listen to this short story for free on Spotify.
What I love about Rob Shearman stories is that he often writes his extremely strange ideas into a world where they're the most commonplace thing ever. The main characters of the stories I've read so far are always the average English citizen going about their dull lives while some of the craziest stuff happens.
This story is also a great example of another running theme I've noticed: body horror. Upon being left by his wife, the protagonist feels lonely and his heart, which he keeps in a tupper box, starts to get covered in hard lumps. At one point in the story he messes around with a knife in order to get them out and it's relatively graphic.
Although I've personally no experience with romantic love and heartbreak, I was still able to appreciate the story. It raises (as I understood it) some good points about how we shouldn't so heavily rely on others to take care of our hearts, but it mainly revolves around what heartbreak does to you and how someone can turn cold and empty, even "heartless", when he feels rejected and unloved.
The morning after being left by his wife, the protagonist realized he was "waking up into a world in which no one loved him". When he notices his heart is getting sick, he quickly tries to find someone new to take care of it. He hooks up with the next best woman he knows - who has nothing in common with him - and offers his heart to her. After effectively cheating on his wife he feels so bad that his heart audibly cries out and finally dies. He stops looking for emotional bonds and just starts sleeping with whatever woman will have him.
At the end of the story his wife comes back to him, looking to make up and go back to how things were - but he no longer has any interest in (being hurt by) her. This is my favourite scene so I will share a snippet of it.
"Put that back," he said. "That isnt't yours anymore."
"Look," she said softly. "Look." And she began to stroke (his heart). She blew on it gently.
"It's not yours," he said, uselessly.
And as he watched, the rock cracked. Pink tissue broke through the stone and bone. "Look," she said again. It was struggling, and then it managed a beat, and once it had managed one, it seemed all too happy to beat again. "Look," she said, and kissed it. The last of the rock crumbled away at her touch. "I love you," she said. "Look, I love you. Look how much." And she offered his heart out to him, as good as new.
Dazedly he reached for it. She smiled, nodded. He took hold of it. Looked at it, as it swelled with new life. And then he dug his fingernails in, dug them in deep, dug 'til it bled. "No," she said. And began squeezing hard, so that one of the ventricles bulged then burst. "No, stop!" And ripped it apart, tearing at it, pulling off gobbets of it, showering them onto the spare room carpet.
"I told you," he said. "it isn't yours. You gave it back."