This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Emma Klein read her story, Son of Friedman,

from the July 1st 2019 issue of the magazine.

Klein's first novel, The Girls, was published in 2016.

She's a winner of the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize and was named one of

Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2017.

Now here's Emma Klein.

Son of Friedman

The light in the restaurant was golden light, heavy light, an outdated sort of light, honestly, popular in the 90s, but now a remnant of a kind of gaudy, old-school pleasure.

It was no longer fashionable to enjoy.

It had been five years, maybe more, since George had

been to this place. It was true that the food was not very good. Big steaks, creamed vegetables,

drizzles of raspberry coolly over everything, all the food you ate back then because caring about

what you ate wasn't yet part of having money.

Still, he liked the fleshy, Mayan shrimp on ice, the gratifying emptiness when the meat popped from the socket.

He wiped his fingers, tight from lemon juice and shrimp, on the napkin in his lap.

More bread? Kenny asked.

It didn't seem possible that Kenny still worked here,

all these years later, but here he was.

Soft-faced Kenny, sweet, with a slight overbite.

He had been a playwright, if George remembered.

...