The story of the writer who called himself O. Henry could almost be an O. Henry story. The writer—his real name was William Sidney Porter—had a secret, and he spent most of his adult life trying to conceal it.
My relationship to deadlines, like that of almost everyone I know, is full of contradictions. I crave them and avoid them, depend on them and resent them. Due dates form the rhythm of my life as a journalist, and there is some comfort in these external expectations. But a deadline is also a train barrelling down the track, and you’re the one strapped to the rails. The time-sensitive obligations that add both structure and suspense to our lives—tax returns, loan payments, license renewals, job applications, event planning, teeth cleanings, biological clocks—can inspire nauseating dread as much as plucky action.
The ingeniousness of “Palace of the Drowned” derives from Mangan’s great skill in stirring up carefully calibrated doubt about everything and everyone. Was that initial meeting by the Grand Canal a trick of fate or did Gilly (who may or may not be a stalker) engineer the encounter? Is Frankie right to be suspicious or is she simply becoming more and more of the madwoman in the palazzo? And, is the palazzo really haunted or are Italian mice just particularly noisy? The ground of truth in this story is as unstable as its watery setting.