In Response to "No One's a Mystery" by Elizabeth Tallent

This short story made me feel sad for the female character, but the meaning of it was fairly easy to follow.  Tallent does a nice job of establishing the tone of the two characters by setting the scene first, and frequently neglects to state who the speaker is during the dialogue, because it is so clear.  The female character isn't even given a name throughout the whole piece, but from her age, and her words, she is given an optimistic and naive tone that is easy to separate from the tone of depressing realism given to the male character.  The naivety of the female character's voice is compounded by the plain and unpleasant setting of the dialogue.  The fact that she is able to reflect on the future so positively while shoved under a dirty truck seat, hiding from Jack's wife makes her version of what will come seem even more fantastic and optimistic.  I was actually surprised when the female character was not more upset at Jack for contradicting her with more pessimistic ideas of what the future holds for them, and the fact that she did not seem to really pick up or read into these comments made her seem hopeful to the point of foolishness.  Even though they were together and not really fighting during this scene, the dialogue made it seem as though their relationship was coming to an end.  It was cool to see the message the setting conveyed (the female character receiving a Birthday present from Jack, suggesting a longer term relationship) and the message of the dialogue conveyed (that the relationship would not last) contradict each other so much;  in the same way that Jack's dialogue suggested a short-term future for the relationship and the female character's dialogue suggested a long-term one.