How Lucky You Are

928 Words4 Pages
“How Lucky You Are” is a short story by Debi Alper from 2010. The short story begins in medias res, and it has an open ending. An unknown narrator in a third-person-view tells the story, and the storyline takes place in one day. The text is build up by four parts. The very first part is a flashback, which takes the reader back one year ago, when Max’s dad left the family. The story takes place in South London in Croydon where Max lives. He lives near Croydon Town Centre, where the UK Border Agency lies, and this agency becomes a central setting in the story, and the area where the action takes place is described as grey and without much nature. The agency itself is a big a big concrete building, witch builds on to an idea of a sad and grey environment. Max and his friends speak slang, and according to Max, Ishraqi speaks better English than himself and his friends. Max is a student at the creative “Brit School”, but he doesn’t appreciate his place at the school. From the first part of the story, the reader realises how Max is a free spirit and creative boy with “a twisted imagination”, according to his mother. He used to be a glad teenager, until his dad left, and then he lost his enthusiasm towards school. Max is now sixteen years old, “bunking of school” and smoking cigarettes. He isn’t aware of the people around him – like he lives in his own little bubble. He is not doing anything meaningful with his life, just existing and observing. But one morning, things start to change. Instead of going to school, he skips a lesson and smoke outside the UK Border Agency, and accidently a girl bumps into him. It turns out that she has an appointment at the agency, and Max can’t help himself not to stare at her eyes and her hair. He thinks she’s cute, and he starts talking to her. The girl is called Ishraqi, and she’s there to seek asylum with her support worker

More about How Lucky You Are

Open Document