To Fill Doesn't fit

Self help was my favorite book we have read this semester. I truly enjoyed the second person narrative style that Lorrie Moore used in most of her stories. For all the short stories but the last, I became accustomed to a unique writing style. In my personal opinion, "To Fill" wasn't a great way to end the book. The story itself was very intriguing and rich but the style wasn't distinct. Although the storyline was similar to other stories in the book, the first person narrative style made it seem like it could be from some other collection of short stories. I was hoping to finish Self help off with something that resembled the rest of the book.

The narrative conventions of this final story are different from the other stories in the book. "To Fill" is written in first person and the only other story in this book that is written in first person is "What is Seized". In "To Fill", every couple pages we see stylistic italicized deviations where Riva is writing to Phillip. We don't actually find out what these letters and writings mean but the point is that we never see strange deviations similar to this in any of the other stories. In addition, the pace of this story just seems inherently faster than that of the other stories in the book. In "To fill", Lorrie Moore doesn't use quotation marks when people are speaking so there are no extra "he said, she said" words. The pace seems faster also because Riva seems like a nervous narrator because she is carrying a secret. The narration seems hurried in certain places which is understandable of anyone who is stealing money and who is constantly worried about getting caught. Since the rest of the book is mainly in second person, I feel like there is more of a steady pace because what the narrator is going through is not reflected in the writing. In first person however, the pace changes more as the main narrator is experiencing certain things.

In class on Friday, we talked about how Riva is different from the main characters in other stories in this book. I believe Kate said that she thinks Riva is older than the other women. Riva is the only woman who has a child, which seems to add an interesting and unique dynamic with her husband. We don't see this in any other stories in this book. The woman in other stories are portrayed as younger and more innocent whereas we see Riva as immoral. She is stealing money from her work but also seems to be in love with Phillip while she is married to Tom (I may be interpreting these letters completely incorrectly). In conclusion, I found "To Fill" to be very different from the other stories in this book. This story doesn't seem to go with the rest of the book even though I do believe it is one of the best stories in the collection. I wonder why Lorrie Moore chose to keep this story and why she made it the last story of the book. After all, the last story along with the first are the most important and she must have a good reason for doing this.