Do Not Disturb, Holly J

Do Not Disturb Response by Holly J
Do Not Disturb: A Response
(With Once in a Lifetime Guest Appearances by Sea Oaks and Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned!)

by Holly J McDede

When the doctor nicknamed Barry Manilow entered 'Do Not Disturb' by A.M Homes, I texted my husband, “I am reading something good.” I added, “No, really” because I had verbally abused George Saunders' 'Sea Oaks' and Wells Tower's 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned' seconds earlier. This is not to say those short stories are not literature, as the “Twilight is not literature. It is crap in a toilet” discussion implied. If there are words, and the words form sentences--BAM! BOOM! WHAM!-- it is literature. 'Sea Oaks' and 'Everything Ravaged'' were just more jumbled and more foreign pieces of literature than 'Do Not Disturb.' Had someone told me 'Everything Ravaged' was about the Iraq War , it would have held more power. II dealt with vikings when I could have related it to my ex-boyfriend, ex-actual human being with morals, who is going to Iraq in June. Instead, I related to 'Do Not Disturb', with its description of a relationship, literal and not just metaphorical for once. The humor pervaded throughout, because bitches are funny—when they are kept on pages of a book, where they cannot jump out to tell you that you stupid personality. The humor lessened as the pages turned, but it remained a cancer story I could enjoy. It tested where sympathy would land and I awarded it to both characters.

Rather than begin in the middle of nowhere, the narrator of 'Do Not Disturb' wastes no time addressing the main storyline. “My wife, the doctor, is not well,” the story begins. Soon the wife states, “I was a bitch before I met you, and I'll be a bitch long after you're gone,” offering the same shocking humor I adore. This ridiculous and disturbed humor continues when the wife asks if she can have a baby and her doctor replies, “Miracles happen.” I knew I was not supposed to sympathize with the wife, but I did sympathize because she, horrifyingly, reminded me of myself. I could not hate her, because she is me and I can't just go and hate myself. My husband, like the husband in this novel, stays with me because, naturally, he may just be in love. At the end, the wife states, “I would know if there was something really wrong.” I hope I pay attention to my husband, because it would be nice if the wife's assumption were true for me and my husband did not end up paralyzed in a hotel. Humor with a moral is my brand of literature, especially if the moral comes from my personal experience, and is not hidden away among the symbolism and bizarre exaggerations, as it is in 'Sea Oaks' and 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.'