The Hillside by Jane Smiley - A Short Story- 16 Pages

 "The Hillside" by Jane Smiley - A Short Story- 16 Pages - An Amazon Orginal Short Story

Yesterday, I am a bit embarrassed to acknowledge, I had never heard of The Pulitzer Prize winning author Jane Smiley. Now with this delightful story I found myself adding her works to my Amazon Wish List.

"The Hillside" is kind of like a post apostolic fairy tale in which humans have been reduced to an uncivilised states supervised by intelligent animals. The setting is so far advanced in the timeline of this alternative world that the legends that humans once dominated over animals, rode horses, and were the beings who created the debris of Lost cities are regarded as completely preposterous.

"Many younger horses refused to believe that there had ever been all-knowing and all-powerful humans who could rule horses, or cats, or fly through the air or destroy everything around them. They laughed at the “old believers”—all you had to do was look at a human, run after a human, give a human a little kick and knock it over, and it was evident that the Great Human Age was purely imaginary. Far easier to look at humans and see why they were reviled outcasts in this long valley, and why the small band that still remained had to be closely monitored by young mares like High Note.."

Dogs were all killed off long ago as servants of humans. Cats insisted they were just taking advantage of the stupid humans.

A lot of animals want all humans exterminated.

"The inquiry was part of a larger case: the Congress of Animals (representing not only bears, cats, horses, and rats, which High Note had seen, but also gorillas, bison, antelopes, crocodiles, and other animals that High Note had never seen) had declared that humans, as a danger to the planet, must be exterminated once and for all, no exceptions. The crime and the danger was that humans in another district had harnessed fire."

The plot turns on High Notes emotional involvement with a human female, Plucky, she has observed in her work.

"The Hillside" was a tremendously enjoyable story. It also might make you think about the nature of hatred, of human destruction and enslavement of billions of animals.  

I am hoping others can suggest where I should proceed on in Jane Smiley 

Jane Smiley is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel A Thousand Acres. The recipient of the O. Henry Award and the Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature, Smiley has published her work in the New Yorker, Elle, the New York Times, and Harper’s. She lives in California.

Mel Ulm