Short Story Review: “A Morning Swim” by Robert Garner McBrearty

Robert Garner McBrearty’s short story “A Morning Swim” (Missouri Review, Winter 2017) is an example of master craftsmanship of a prose storyteller:

(1) its opening paragraph immediately sets up one of the story’s two principle conflicts;

(2) there is careful handling of tone and the emotions that run from suspense, to euphoria, to anxiety, to rude humor (a cringe-worthy, Larry David-esque moment), to dark emotions of melodrama;

(3) the plot morphs from being one that involves an individual versus nature (shark, water) to one that invovles a conflict between two individuals (husband and wife). It then changes again into a (sub)plot of the individual versus their self (the swimmer).

With regard to themes, McBrearty’s story seems to oscillate from Wordsworth’s poem “The World is Too Much With Us” (1807) and how––

Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away,

––to then shift to the attitude, à la Marcus Aurelius, of advocating that one should cultivate an intimacy with Nature (III, ii). In doing so, according to Aurelius, one must reject one’s sense of injury—though that doesn’t mean laugh it off (IV, vii), but by rejecting it one carries out Nature’s bidding (V, i; see also V, iii). To quarrel is to go against Nature (II, xvi), for Nature is not evil (II, xvii). To live with nature means to live with others, which is a part of what “A Morning Swim is about.”