Close to the Water’s Edge is a short story written by the Irish writer Claire Keegan.
The main character in the story is a boy who just turned 19. He is a student at the Harvard University or as he call it himself Cambridge, which is the town where Harvard University is situated. Through out the story he is staying at his mother’s penthouse apartment near the ocean.
His birthday party is marked by a dinner at the fancy restaurant Leonardo’s. But the atmosphere at the dinner is cold and cynical. The conversations between the main character, his mother and his millionaire stepfather is not comfortable and cheerfully but more snide and spiteful.
The millionaire stepfather is trying several times to discuss about homosexual men as a part of the military with the main character, but every time his mother tries to change the subject to something else like: how he is the top of his class at Harvard or how good the olives tastes.
The grandmother of the main character is the only person who really gets him, and through flashbacks you hear of her life living on a pig farm with a husband that she did not love, and the regrets of her life that she did not leave him and try to make a better life for her self.
It is important for a person to take decisions in life, decided and chosen by themselves, decisions that will create and lead on the way to the future and finally to form a unique identity.
In life many people have tons of roads to choose between, and it is the way you choose that will defined you as a person. In the choice of the road the person is finally going to choose, many people are trying to influence the chose, but in the end you have to decide for yourself to create your own future and unique identity.
This is shown in the short story Close to the Water’s Edge, where the main character is struggling to find his own way in life but his mother is trying to choose for him and plan his future as she wish it to become.
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