This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from The New Yorker magazine.

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

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month, we're going to hear The Size of Things by

Samantha Shueblen, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, which appeared in the

New Yorker in May of 2017. In the display cases, along the aisles, on the shelves, a subtly

shifting rainbow stretched from one end of the store to the other.

I still remember that site as the beginning of disaster.

The story was chosen by Suvankham Tamavanssa, who is the author of four poetry collections

and the short story collection, How to Pronounceounce Knife, which was published in 2020.

Hi, Savankam.

Hello, Deborah.

So when we talked about doing this podcast, you brought up this story.

You didn't remember the title of the story or who had written it, but you remembered the story itself very vividly.

And I'm wondering what it was that you were remembering was it

the way the story is written was it the details of the plot was it the approach to

storytelling I don't remember why it stood out to me just that it did. And the thing that I remember most wasn't even the language

or the sentences. It was the way in which I felt changed in terms of how I felt about a character

that I would not normally feel for.

And I was surprised by my own feeling for this character.

Right, because the central character is described in the beginning as a man who's wealthy, he's inherited a lot of money.

He's seen around town with various women.

...