Copernicus is Dying is a great title and probably the best thing going for this short story. That might sound a tad harsh and it's not that I vehemently disliked reading it, but unfortunately, this really didn't do much for me. That's the beauty of short stories, though. They are usually short enough and don't take up much of your time. If you come across one you don't like, you can just move on to the next one.
The narrator is a single mom driving around desperately searching for large crickets at various Petco stores because her son's lizard, Copernicus, is sickly from a lack of nourishment. Apparently the little guy has quite an appetite for the larger, crunchier, more delicious variety, but there's a shortage of them. Drats. She also has a strained relationship with her son and hopes that completing this increasingly ridiculous cricket-finding mission will bring them closer together and get her back in his good graces.
Maybe there is more depth to the story that I am missing, but everything just fell flat, coming across as a too jejune and safe. The humor also didn't really land for me. I never felt emotionally invested in where the story was going. Just indifference. Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.
On a more positive note, Literary Hub is a great resource for free short stories, especially for discovering new contemporary authors whose work otherwise would never have crossed my radar. Emily Doyle is one of those authors and although I'm in no rush to read anything else by her, I am curious to see if some of the other writers featured on the site appeal to me more.
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