Emma Cline Reads "Northeast Regional"
The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2017
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
He stood there for another few minutes before a boy and a girl ambled toward him, the boy not immediately recognizable as his son. It was Rowan, obvious now as the boy got closer, and Richard pretended he’d known all along. Wasn’t that what parents were supposed to do? Be able to spot their children in a crowd, in an instant, the most primal of recognitions?
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| 0:00.0 | This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. |
| 0:09.1 | I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. |
| 0:11.9 | On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Emma Klein read her story, Northeast Regional, |
| 0:18.1 | from the April 10th, 2017 issue of the magazine. Klein's first novel, The Girls, |
| 0:23.7 | was published in 2016 and was shortlisted for the John Leonard Award from the National Book |
| 0:28.4 | Critics Circle. She won the Paris Review's George Plimpton Award in 2014. Now here's Emma Klein. |
| 0:37.3 | Northeast Regional. |
| 0:39.3 | Close to five hours on the train, and then 20 minutes by taxi from the station to the school. |
| 0:45.3 | He would have time to call the lawyer, work through the options. |
| 0:49.3 | He had the number of a consultant in case Rowan needed to apply somewhere else. |
| 0:53.3 | Maybe the school legally had to |
| 0:55.8 | contact the college he got into, but Richard wasn't sure. And maybe it wouldn't come to that. |
| 1:01.5 | The school wouldn't want to make anything public. The thought calmed him. Good, good. They were on |
| 1:07.8 | his side, even if they had not said so in so many words. |
| 1:11.9 | They weren't stupid. |
| 1:19.7 | The trains were housed underground in cool alleys of concrete, and Richard headed for the first car. |
| 1:26.4 | The train was only half full, the interior air recirculated to an unnatural chill. Richard settled in that brief moment when he could present |
| 1:30.8 | himself anew in the context of this narrowed world. He could be kind, he could be neat and |
| 1:37.4 | conscientious, and all it took was laying his folded jacket on the seat beside him, tucking his |
| 1:43.2 | newspaper into the webbed nylon pocket. |
| 1:47.2 | Richard's pills were in his bag, consolidated in one container. He could easily identify them by shape |
| 1:53.9 | and color, the pills for depression and insomnia, offering nudges in his mood like the touch |
... |
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