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Deborah Treisman

This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction Editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear Hostel by Fiona McFarlane, which appeared in the New Yorker in March of 2024.

Paul Yoon

I don't know how Mandy and Roy felt about the hostel, only that they walked past it one night and heard someone crying in the park. According to Roy, he knew at once that the person crying was a girl, but Mandy was less sure.

Deborah Treisman

The story was chosen by Paul Yoon, who's the author of five books of fiction, including the story collection the Hive and the Honey, which won the story Prize in 2024. A new novel, Aetna, will be published next month. Hi Paul.

Paul Yoon

Hi Deborah.

Deborah Treisman

Thank you for doing this.

Paul Yoon

Oh, I'm so happy to be here.

Deborah Treisman

So what made you choose Fiona MacFarlane's Story Hostel to read and discuss today.

Paul Yoon

Well, the quick answer is, I absolutely love it. I think I'm always looking for when a story gives me a sense of mystery, beautiful mystery. And this story did that on sentence one, you know, where you realize the story that we're about to witness or read is a story that the narrator has yet to tell her husband. And so in that way, I was completely intrigued. It's almost like we're in on a kind of confession or a secret that her husband has yet to be a part of.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Mm.

Deborah Treisman

So it's the way it pulls you in at the very opening.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, this kind of idea where if a story is trying to teach us about its world as quickly as possible, this one is sort of telling us that things might be at a remove or there might be secrets or stories that are not told. And so immediately that structure has been kind of built. And I was really intrigued by that. And it's extremely mysterious.

Deborah Treisman

Well, did you first read it when it came out in the magazine, or did you read it in the story collection?

Paul Yoon

Oh, no, I read it when it first came out in the magazine. I read almost every short story, the fiction, every week, so it was a pure joy to read. I've been a huge fan of Fiona's for a long time, but I wasn't aware that she was working on a story collection, sort of a link story collection. So I wasn't aware that this was a part of a bigger project. And so I just kind of read it as a standalone story. And, yeah, I was just so excited by it. And then Highway 13 came out, and I was even more excited by that too.

Deborah Treisman

Right. So it became part of McFarlane's collection, Highway 13.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

Which is about a fictional serial killer. And the killer himself is never sort of center stage. Right. It's all about the characters who are in the periphery. And this story, Hostel, seems to kind of take that spirit as well and embrace it. Where you think the story is about one thing, and then it moves to something else. It's constantly sort of subverting your expectation.

Deborah Treisman

Absolutely. We've now given away that there is a serial killer involved at some point. So that will now be the mystery that people will listen for as you read the story.

Paul Yoon

Although I would argue that's only one of many mysteries in this story, which is why I love it.

Deborah Treisman

Absolutely. Well, we'll talk some more after the reading. And now here's Paul Yoon reading Hostel by Fiona McFarlane.

Paul Yoon

Hostel. I've never told my husband this story. But I suppose I will eventually, on some sticky night in, say, February, as we lie naked in bed with the ceiling fan set at its highest speed, we'll be waiting for a storm to bluster in from the south, and I'll see the relevant part of him lying flushed and heavy against his thigh, and I'll think about how I'd consider taking it in my mouth if the room were cooler by as little as 2 degrees. That will remind me of Roy and his wife, and I'll feel like talking about them. And I'll start by telling my husband that I used to know this couple who, on learning they were going to have a baby, began taking long walks together in the evening. I might not use their real names. It would be hard, though, not to reveal Roy's, which seemed almost to have shaped his personality. His given name, much to his embarrassment, was royal and in defiance of his parents grandiosity, he cultivated an unroyal Persona. He was a humble guy, self effacing. He lived his life, at least his public social life, as if he were answering a survey about it. If someone asked, how was your trip to Fiji, Roy? His answer might be, I'd describe myself as having enjoyed it. The trouble was that he took his humility to such lengths that he actually came across in the end as kingly, detached, benevolent, devoid of individuality. His opinions and tastes and desires were as carefully bland as a king's must be a polite king. I mean, who coexists with the Constitution and whose irrelevance now and then sparks a complicated optimism about the possibility of a republic or of course, a queen. There's no need to use Roy's wife's real name. In fact, she's no longer his wife. I'll call her Mandy. A name like this reveals nothing about her, except perhaps that she was pretty and athletic. The evening walks were a response to Mandy's fear that pregnancy might change her body. It's not that Mandy was vain. She just liked to be good at everything she did, so she liked to be good at having a body. At the time, Roy and Mandy lived in Newtown, which I'll explain to my husband, is a crowded inner city Sydney neighborhood that back in the 90s was grimy but beginning to gentrify. They were part of that gentrification. They'd bought a tall shuttered terrace house in North Newtown and fitted it with many skylights so that sunlight filtered down like luminous smoke through the stairwells and woke them each morning from a gleaming square above their bed. You could sit on their guest's toilet and see the undersides of airplanes. The kitchen, too, was new, and they painted the front door in intrepid red as if to advertise their plucky personalities. They were both lawyers with good salaries, and the timing of the pregnancy was part of a long term plan that took into account the rising property values in their neighborhood. Each night they strolled hand in hand through the streets of Newtown, Mandy's belly beginning to show, while Sydney uni students rolled joints in the tiled front gardens of their rented houses and the employees of Thai restaurants ferried bags of fragrant rubbish out into narrow alleyways. Sometimes Roy and Mandy walked down one particular street that had a backpacker hostel on it. The hostel was shabby and loud, but Roy and Mandy claimed to like it. They said it reminded them of their own student travels through Europe, of being 19 and crawling into each other's beds in crowded dorms. There was the time at a hostel on Mykonos when apparently Roy sat on a top bunk, his legs dangling, while Mandy stood between them sucking him off, and some raucous Croatian girls burst into the dorm. I heard Roy and Mandy tell this story multiple times, separately and together. Roy told it as if someone had informed him that if he didn't tell a slightly risque story at least once every year or two, he'd be considered terminally unadventurous. Mandy told it with genuine pleasure, as if she were astonished at herself for having lived a life in which an incident like this had taken place. The details changed over the years. Eventually the girls became Czech and they ran from the room shouting, God save the Queen. Roy and Mandy had had other backpacking adventures, but hasn't every middle class Australian? Weren't we all at one time, 19 years old in sweet, oblivious amateurs? There was a night on the roof of a hostel in Marrakech that I've told my husband about, another in Penang in a hotel full of Belgian doctors that I haven't a full Moon party on Kuta Beach. That explains the small scar beneath my left ear. Everywhere I Traveled in the 80s I found Australians in short shorts carrying treasured copies of Southeast Asia on a shoest. We all stank and thought we were poor, and none of the sex we had was interesting enough to talk about even two years later. But Roy and Mandy continued to recount their escapades. They spoke with such fondness for their younger selves, as if they had somehow been especially sweet and especially amateurish, that I was always vaguely annoyed by their stories of those times. The backpacker hostel in their gentrifying neighborhood was made up of three connected terrace houses, leprous with pink paint and festooned with Tibetan prayer flags. It was being slowly devoured by some enormous bushes of night blooming jasmine which clotted the street with their creamy smell. No matter the time of day, there were always lights in the windows, there was always music playing and laundry hanging from the balconies. The street wasn't well lit, and the hostel reared up so suddenly from the footpath and was so tall and bright that walking past it in the dark felt a little like being in a tugboat bumping along the edge of an ocean liner. The hostel was next to a park, which in turn was next to a church, and on warm nights backpackers usually occupied both the park and the churchyard in more or less furtive stages of drunkenness, sex, or both. In my experience, it was impossible to walk past that hostel without thinking of all the fumblings and unzippings of your own young life, the stubborn grass stains, the greedy crevices, the rueful grimaces when someone's wrist seized up at an awkward angle. These were my own impressions, of course. I don't know how Mandy and Roy felt about the hostel, only that they walked past it one night and heard someone crying in the park. According to Roy, he knew at once that the person crying was a girl, but Mandy was less sure. There was a depth to the weeping which seemed masculine. It could even have been the growl of a possum. Anyway, something about the sound unsettled her enough that when Roy stopped walking she squeezed his hand and shook her head as if to say that they shouldn't get involved. But Roy, noble, kingly Roy, squeezed back, gave a reassuring smile, and called out, hello? Hello, Is anybody there? The weeper took some time to emerge, but when she did she was a tall blonde girl in cut off denim shorts and a baggy tie, dyed T shirt. Apparently she'd been crouching against the wall of the hostel, not far from the footpath but concealed by a bushy bottle brush, and the first things that Mandy noticed about her were that her braided hair was dotted with thin red fibers, the stamens of bottlebrush flowers, and that she was barefoot. When Roy told the story, he never mentioned what he'd first noticed about the girl. Mandy was always quick to say how pretty she was. I heard her compare the girl to assorted actresses, all of whom had been blonde in at least one major role, but otherwise looked nothing alike. The girl came sobbing up from the bottle brush, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. For several minutes, she was able only to apologize and to weep. According to Roy, Mandy rushed to the girl, took both her hands, and asked her what was wrong, while the girl just stood with her streaming face and her gulping mouth saying sorry. Roy asked her if she was hurt, and I can imagine this Roy stepping up to her and asking gravely, would you describe yourself as having been hurt? There would be some urgency in his voice, but also some restraint, and the effect would be that of a member of the royal family pausing in a receiving line to speak to a retired Olympian. The girl shook her head to say that no, she wasn't hurt. Roy asked if there was anyone they could find for hera friend, a boyfriend, someone inside, because it was obvious that she had come from the hostel. Her fair hair was twisted in Balinese braids, her neck was noticeably dirty, and she seemed to cry with a European accent. The girl only shook her head again and cried louder. Can we take you to your room? Can we get you anything? Mandy asked. Roy asked, and the whole time the little life they'd created together was floating inside Mandy, preparing itself to be part of the world. But the girl didn't want to go to her room or to be brought anything. Mandy felt that there was nothing to do but take the girl in her arms, so she did. This seemed to be the right thing. The girl collapsed against Mandy's neck in relief and sorrow. Since they could get nothing more intelligible from her, Mandy and Roy decided to take her home with them. It was one of those decisions a couple make without discussion, but in full knowledge that they were in agreement. Roy nodded, stepped away from Mandy and the girl, and gestured down the street. Mandy, with her arm around the girl's shaking shoulders, led her away from the park and the hostel. The girl came without hesitation. Five minutes later, they were safely behind the red front door. Roy filled the kettle for tea, and Mandy guided the girl to one of the chrome bar stools at the kitchen island. When she was shopping for the stools, Mandy had imagined her children sitting at them, crayons gripped in chunky fists, while she made dinner. Roy and Mandy's vision would arrive home from work, enter the kitchen rolling up his shirt sleeves, kiss everybody hello, and open a bottle of Merlot. It would all be very ordinary, very lovely. And as she described the scene, I could see it too, and the safety it represented, a safety I had always associated with Roy. In fact, I had always found those stools perilous. I had spun back and forth on them many times, confessional and unhappy, my hands pushing off from the Corian countertop while Roy leaned toward me over the island with a look of concern on his reassuring face. Mandy told me about the kids and crayons later, after the divorce, when they just sold the house and she was offering me the bar stools. I had no use for bar stools, but it seemed important to accept them, so Mandy guided the girl to one of those stools, and this was the point at which they learned that the girl was Swiss and 18, but her name was unusual enough, or her accent heavy enough that all they could be sure of was the letter. It started with S. She was no longer crying, although her body was still wracked occasionally by dry, soundless sobs. In order to subdue these, she buried her chin against her chest in such a way that Roy and Mandy could see every bit of the wincing scalp exposed by her braids. She explained that she was backpacking around Asia and Australia with her boyfriend, Daniel. His name brought a quaver to her voice, but she didn't give into it. She and Daniel had another six months of travel planned and were due to leave Sydney in two days, hitchhiking to southern New South Wales, where they'd lined up a season of work picking fruit. After that their plan was to head north to the Great Barrier Reef for a final tropical hurrah, then returned to Basel in time to start university. S. Wanted to study psychology. Daniel was supposed to become a doctor. S. Looked skeptical at the idea of Daniel as a doctor, and the wry face she pulled made Roy and Mandy laugh. S joined in this laughter and relaxed visibly. She curled her bare feet around the legs of the stool, shook her tight, greasy braids behind her shoulders, and tugged at the neckline of her T shirt as if to cool herself down. She wore a halter bikini top beneath the shirt. Roy and Mandy now noticed the withered bikini strings pressed into the back of her pinkish neck. Daniel had been drinking all afternoon. He was flirting with an Irish girl, had been flirting all week, and when the Irish girl sat in Daniel's lap and S. Objected, Daniel made a joke at her expense, at S's expense, and everyone at the barbecue laughed. S told the story as if she saw now how trivial it must sound, but there was still great dignity to the way she seemed to look back on it with sorrow and wisdom, as if it had happened to a much younger person. Mandy and Roy, listening, must have thought of their passionate, brave young selves in those filthy backpacker hostels across Europe. They must have felt tender and protective toward S. And much older Now Mandy suggested that a glass of wine might be in order, something stronger than tea, although naturally she wouldn't have any herself. I can see the way she would have stroked her rounding stomach as she said this. When Roy told the story, he always made it clear that the wine had been Mandy's idea, that he would never have suggested it, and of course that he would never have drunk wine alone with the girl, who was, after all, only 18 and in a vulnerable state. Mandy would nod in agreement as he said this. I once saw them tell the story while Mandy was breastfeeding, and she nodded so vehemently that the baby's little mouth detached from her purple nipple. So Roy opened a bottle of Shiraz, and he and the girl drank only a glass or two each. As they all sat talking in the kitchen, Mandy and Roy told stories of their travels and their university days. S. Talked about her parents, who had divorced a few years earlier and were now both seeing much older partners. It was as if S. Said the divorce had aged them, and she shook her head in wonder and disbelief because she was at just the right age to start pitting her parents. They talked about the baby and somehow got around to looking at childhood photos of Roy and Mandy, and S. Said that if the baby was a girl, they should name it after her. She was joking, of course, but the familiarity of this made it doubly impossible for them to ask for her name again. Finally Mandy yawned and said she thought it was time to get some sleep, and she suggested that Roy walk S. Back to the hostel. Or, of course S. Was very welcome to stay the night, although they had already converted the guest room into a nursery, and S. Would need to sleep on the couch, which folded out into a bed and was apparently fairly comfortable. I slept on that couch a few times myself, Always heartbroken or drunk, usually both, absolutely sure that my life would never improve, that loneliness was everlasting, that no man with four arms like Roy's would ever turn to me with love. And I can confirm that it was indeed fairly comfortable. S. Of course, chose to stay the night. Why do I say of course? I'm not sure. Only that it's so easy to imagine the intimacy of the three of them as they giggled at baby albums in that bright, bare kitchen and how much nicer a stain this pristine house must have seemed than a sheepish return to the hostel. Also, S. Said she liked the idea of Daniel wondering where she was. She wanted him to suffer. Roy made up the fold out bed, as he'd done for me so many times, and told S. To help herself to anything in the kitchen. Then he withdrew. Mandy found the girl some pajamas. She issued warnings about the delicate temperament of the downstairs shower. Then she and S. Hugged in such a genuine way that Mandy apparently had felt as if they were sisters. At this point in the story, someone in Mandy and Roy's audience would usually ask if it had occurred to them that the girl might rob them, and Mandy and Roy would always say, no, absolutely not, and Mandy would say that she had only done what she hoped some stranger might one day do, if necessary, for her own daughter. When she said this, she would lean down to kiss the baby's head, or she and Roy would look at each other as if to say, don't worry, we'll never actually let her out of our sight. There will never be any need for the kindness of strangers. Both Roy and Mandy insisted that they'd felt perfectly safe with S. In their house and that they had slept long and deep through the night. But surely Mandy must have spent some time during that night gazing at the dim square of the bedroom skylight and thinking about the girls sleeping on the foldout who had been so unabashed about changing that Mandy had seen her young buoyant breasts, and Roy must have thought about how he'd gone around making sure that the windows and doors were locked, and all the time there was a stranger in the house with them, a girl who might have been anyone whose name they didn't even know. I've also imagined them having thrilled, hushed sex, knowing that the girl was sleeping downstairs. Of course I've imagined that, though I probably won't mention it to my husband. And I've imagined the girl coming into their room in the early light, climbing to bed with her long blonde limbs. Maybe Mandy spent the night awake, rigid, waiting to see if Roy would get up as if to use the bathroom, say her name in a loud whisper, and then, on receiving no response, creep trembling down the stairs toward the foldout bed. I don't know what it was really like, but I do know that every unhappy night I slept in that fairly comfortable bed. I wondered if Roy would come down those stairs. I listened for a step and thought at some length about what he would say or do and how I'd respond when he didn't come. Not once I cursed the effortless happiness of married people. In the morning the girl was gone. She'd stripped the bed, turned it back into a couch, drunk a mug of instant coffee and left a note that said thank you very much with very underlined three times, she signed it S. She hadn't stolen or damaged anything, had even closed the gate on her way out. I imagined the house feeling strangely empty that day, both Roy and Mandy looking in at the spotless nursery, even more than usual, reminding themselves that they were awaiting a joyous arrival, not mourning a departure. Mandy and Roy walked by the hostel again that night. They considered going in and asking after S, but because they didn't know her name, they decided against it. Their baby was born three months later. She was the first of many babies of my acquaintance to be named Isabella. When Isabella was a few weeks old, Mandy read a newspaper article about two Swiss backpackers who had been picking fruit in southern New South Wales. At the end of the harvest, these backpackers had left for Sydney. They were planning to hitchhike and hadn't been heard from since. Their names were Daniel and Sabina. Mandy studied the photo of the couple in the newspaper. Sabina didn't look like S, but she also didn't not look like S. Mandy showed the picture to Roy, who agreed that she might have been S. Every time I heard them tell the story, they always looked a little apologetic at this point, as if they knew that it would have been improved by a positive identification of S. At first Roy and Mandy ended their story here with this slightly ambiguous thrill. The story was enriched a few months later, however, when a pair of mushroom foragers found Daniel's and Sabina's bodies in Barrow State Forest. They had been shot. Daniel had also been stabbed. Until then, I had never taken seriously the concept of evil. It was too abstract, I thought, and too convenient. Of course, there was no power that moved in darkness through the world, recruiting some people and striking others. But I remember watching the news that day. The screen showed police tape across a bush track, officers walking with black Labradors, helicopters hovering above treetops. Nothing overtly frightening, but all of it was terrible. The tautness of the tape, the businesslike trot of the dogs, the way the crowns of the trees thrashed with the force of the helicopter blades. I felt the presence of something then, quite suddenly, in my stomach and at the roots of my hair. I watched the helicopters rise from the treetops as if hauling a vast net full of some heavy, invisible substance that seemed to want to drag them back down. But they broke away. Isabella was six months old when the bodies were found, able to sit up on her own in a tottering way at barbecues and lunches and catch ups and cafes. Roy and Mandy were asked to tell the story of S. The murdered girl who stayed the night. They always complied. As we leaned toward them to listen, I would look at Mandy and at Roy and at everyone else present to see which of us might be willing to suggest that by being kind to us that night, Roy and Mandy had made her so trusting of Australian strangers that she might, for example, have been less careful if a man approached her on a highway, offering her a ride in his truck. Maybe no one else ever thought this. Maybe. Only I pictured S. On a lonely road with her tight braids and her boyfriend backpack at her feet, one thumb raised, hoping for hospitality, and thinking when the truck pulled up that she had found it. My husband, when I tell him about S. Will recognize this part of the story because Sabina and Daniel were only the first of the bodies found at Barrow State. And what came next? The capture of the man who had chosen his victims at random? The media circus, the trashy books and TV movies, was spread out like a wicked feast for anyone to pick at. But S. Was something private, a connection. She was Roy and Mandy's. She was mine. Years passed. Despite the existence of evil. None of our friends would admit to being surprised when Roy and Mandy broke up. But I was. I had been so sure of the red door, the skylights, the way they looked at each other as they told the story of S. I had been sure that marriage to a man like Roy, so reliable, so benevolent, would be like stepping onto a throne from which there could be no abdication. But apparently they had found themselves in different places, wanting different things. Isabella was just starting high school at the time. Property values in their neighborhood were soaring and the house sold for a record price. Mandy inherited me in the divorce, but we lost touch when I moved out of state and married. Yesterday I was back in Sydney and ran into Roy on a street in Paddington. He looked good, older, leaner, like a man who would no longer talk about his backpacking days. There was no ring on his finger. He suggested a drink and I liked the idea and was going to say yes. I wanted to ask him about the divorce, hoping he might say I wouldn't describe myself as having enjoyed it. I wanted to hear the story of S. One more time, as told by Roy. It felt as though this might be my last chance to get close to the largeness of life, its terror and mystery, while remaining perfectly safe, and I wanted to ask if he'd ever thought about me. As I lay in the fold out bed. I already knew that he'd thought about me, and I also knew that if I did go for a drink with him, we would find ourselves in a bed together sooner or later. But as he stood with me in the street, his hand on my elbow suggesting this drink, I was reminded of a member of the royal family showing concern for patients on a hospital visit. It hurt just to look at him. I still might have gone, but then I remembered that I was married now and that married people are happy.

Deborah Treisman

That was Paul Yoon reading Hostel by Fiona MacFarlane. The story appeared in the New Yorker in March of 2024 and was included in MacFarlane's collection, Highway 13, which was published later that year.

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Deborah Treisman

So, Paul, as you said before, the story opens in a very interesting way by framing itself as a story. It's a story that this narrator has never told her husband.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely.

Deborah Treisman

But in fact, she isn't even telling a story at that point. She's imagining telling it.

Paul Yoon

Right, right. There are all these levels of non sharing or non telling.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah, she's imagining it on this imaginary night in bed with her husband. And we become, even in that first paragraph, we're sort of two or three layers removed from the story itself. Why do you think that framing was useful to Fiona MacFarlane in telling this story?

Paul Yoon

That's a great question, Deborah. I think for me, if the spirit of this project that Fiona was working on was to, of course, you know, tackle a book about a serial killer, but also focus on all the people who are affected by this killer, who are victims of the killer and the sort of ripple effect of all, all these crimes and murders, this story and the way it opens seems to kind of embody that spirit of generating and creating layers to a narrative where it's, you know, it's almost like saying, hey, this story is gonna be about this one thing, but it's also gonna be about many other things as well. And kind of building that sort of that many roomed house, I suppose, like, right away, if that makes any sense.

Deborah Treisman

And we start it in the bedroom.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. In a very sort of small, intimate space. Right. And yet the story sort of opens up dramatically from there. Right. Where it's almost a claustrophobic space in the beginning.

Deborah Treisman

Yes. And strangely, because what follows is this story that she's imagining telling her husband. We never get the actual telling of it, and we never get at all, really, in the story, the presence of that husband. And even in that scene, he's not described. She says that, you know, the relevant part of him is his penis. We know nothing else of him.

Paul Yoon

That's it.

Deborah Treisman

Presumably, he has a head and some hands and so on, but they're not relevant. So it's a very. It is kind of a weirdly disembodied, fragmented image of a man in bed.

Paul Yoon

100%. And I would also argue that that idea of like a close frame recurs throughout the story where, you know, when I'm crafting stories myself, something I often think about are the images that recur.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

And what are the images that we're sort of bringing or objects that we're bringing into a story on that craft level? And something that repeats in the story is this kind of this. This image of a skylight.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

Which is like sort of a framed window where you can only sort of see a portion of the sky or the underbelly of the plains, and you can't actually see everything else around it. Right. And this first paragraph with sort of framing the husband in that way seems to mirror that idea.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah, yeah. We never get a complete view of anything.

Paul Yoon

No. And not only. And, you know, S is S. We don't actually know if her name is Sabina, really.

Nicole Phelps

Right.

Paul Yoon

No one has any real names, really.

Deborah Treisman

Except for Roy.

Paul Yoon

Except Roy. And we don't actually know that much about Daniel. S's boyfriend either. You know, he's completely removed from the story as well. And of course, we don't know much about the serial killer.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. I mean, the sort of fascinating thing is, I think the only scene we see genuinely through the eyes of our narrator that's actually happening in real time is the moment where she sees Roy at the end.

Paul Yoon

Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

The rest is recounted.

Paul Yoon

And the rest is, again, you were saying, in this kind of strange way it's recounted, but also it's sort of an imagined recounting. Because there are times where she's, you know, the narrator's thinking, well, I'll tell my husband this part of the story, but I won't tell him this part of the story. Right.

Deborah Treisman

And then, interestingly, we get previous stories where she's told him this and she hasn't told him that.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. Like, she'll, you know, tell him about one experience at a hostel, and then, you know, we'll decide to not share another experience she might have had at a hostel.

Deborah Treisman

And we don't know why.

Paul Yoon

We don't know why. Again, there are many layers of mystery to me and questions. And as a reader, I'm deeply intrigued by that. But it also makes me. I don't know, it makes me feel like I'm kind of, I don't know, falling down the hole, but in a great way. Like the rat hole.

Deborah Treisman

Right.

Paul Yoon

And just sort of being kind of. I just want to let go and kind of be a part of this world that Fiona has created. And if the story's going to spin me around, you know, or if there are corners or spaces that I can't see, I'm sort of all for it. It feels like an experience in that way.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. And she's such a crafty narrator. You know, I want to think about her portraits of Roy and Mandy, which, you know, when I first read the story, I didn't really think much about it.

Paul Yoon

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

But I'm reading it again and again, and particularly before coming here today, I was really struck by how mean she is towards them, you know, and how sort of hostile.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

What a great word. Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

Well, let's talk about the title. Why is this called Hostel?

Paul Yoon

I was hoping you'd bring that up because, again, I think, you know, I remember my. When this came out, that in itself was sort of a mystery. I was like, oh, that's a.

Podcast Advertiser

That's.

Paul Yoon

What an intriguing title. You know, to me, hostels are these sort of, I don't know, liminal spaces. Right. Spaces almost like airport lounges or something, where it feels like you are part of a world, but also kind of disengaged with it in a little bit where, like, sort of the rules of the world don't always sort of, you know, come into play in those spaces. I don't know. I don't know if you've ever backpacked, Deborah, and spent, you know, time in hostels. It was one of my favorite things

Deborah Treisman

a long time ago.

Paul Yoon

I mean, I certainly did not have. I certainly did not have you know, as wild experiences as their narrator or Roy and Mandy. But there was for sure, like, a thrill of being in these spaces where it felt both. Like the world was of constantly passing through, but also you're sort of removed from it at the same time.

Deborah Treisman

Mm. Everything is transitory, so anything goes.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. And I think sort of that speaks to kind of. Obviously, for Daniel and S. They are transient figures in this and almost like sort of ghosts or phantoms. And for the narrator, I think Roy and Mandy have become sort of these transient figures as well. So it could be speaking to that as well.

Deborah Treisman

Well, they have. By the end of the story, they've become transient in her life because they're no longer really in it. But I feel as though for the bulk of the story, Roy and Mandy are this, for her, kind of lodestone, like this very elemental, untouchable thing. It never occurs to her that their marriage might break up. And I suppose I want to go back to the sort of hostility she feels towards them while telling the story of them telling a story.

Paul Yoon

Right, right.

Deborah Treisman

Which is. I mean, what do you think the roots of that are?

Paul Yoon

I think part of it is jealousy. It's clear she's in love with Roy. Right. The narrator. And part of this, you know, we're thinking about sort of frames of this story. One frame that I'm thinking about are one room that you sort of step in slightly, or the room's. The door is ajar, but you don't actually fully go into is, you know, what's going on with Roy and the narrator. Like, what's their history?

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

We don't actually know, except I sense a deep longing that the narrator feels for Roy and lust as well. Right. And so I think that whatever it is that she was unable to achieve with that has been kind of transformed or skewed into a kind of hostility toward both of them. That's one read. I also think again, to think of another room, this many roomed house where we. We sort of see the room, the doors ajar, is, you know, the story, even our first paragraph opens with that Roy and his wife are about to have a baby. Right. The reason why they're taking long walks together in the evening is that they're about to have a baby. And so you think that's what the story is going to be about. And then, of course, it sort of turns a corner and becomes something else.

Deborah Treisman

Right.

Paul Yoon

But I do wonder if there is some sort of deep unspoken desire or some awareness of wanting a child, perhaps, or perhaps maybe not. Literally wanting a child, but maybe this kind of sense of a family that's more than just like her and, say, a husband.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. I mean, you definitely feel the sort of desire for Roy because she's just constantly thinking of him in sexual terms. Returning to the story about the hostel, even when S is staying the night, she has this fantasy of S climbing into bed with them.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely.

Deborah Treisman

Him going downstairs. I mean, very bizarre in that context.

Paul Yoon

But also continues, that thing you mentioned, Deborah, about the body being framed. Right. Or there's only sort of parts of the body where it's like his forearms. You know, no one will have as many amazing forearms as Roy. Or when she's fixated on Mandy giving him a blowjob in the hostel, it calls back to that opening paragraph and sort of the way she frames her husband. Right.

Deborah Treisman

But at the same time, kind of separate from the desire. What I sense there is this deep covetousness of this marriage as a unit, you know, of this life, this. This house, how they live, how they are together. I mean, ultimately, she thinks Roy is sort of bland.

Paul Yoon

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

Right. And the final moment, when she turns down what might have been the culmination of her long desired moment, it's just because she's remembering, oh, well, this guy's kind of bland. He's like the king greeting the retired Olympian.

Nicole Phelps

You know,

Deborah Treisman

he's not actually all that.

Paul Yoon

But there's also that line, you know, near the end of the story where she's. I think the naery is very surprised that they end up breaking up. Right.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

You know, I had been so sure of the red door, the skylights, the way they looked at each other. And, you know, I've been so sure that marriage to a man like Roy would be like stepping onto a throne.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

From which there could be no abdication. So there's a kind of. There's solid ground to her. There's solid ground. They're a haven, you know, they're a habitat. And I think if this story is being told in retrospect, she knows that that has been kind of taken away from her. Right. That the house has sort of collapsed. And part of that hostility that we feel, I think could be kind of that sort of awareness that this did not last.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. That she's been idealizing this marriage and this relationship for so long, and then, you know, nobody else really was. No one else was surprised.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Deborah Treisman

People grow apart. It wasn't a perfect marriage and so on.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. Or sort of were aware that evil exists in the world. And then suddenly, you know, you were very much aware it exists when something happens. Right. And so one of my favorite paragraphs in this story is when she's imagining, or I guess, watching the TV after the bodies move out, and there's, like, police and there's black Labradors walking around. And this amazing image of the helicopters sort of hovering above the treetops. And then the way she just sort of describes, you know, she's watching it through the tv. It's like I watch the helicopters rise from the treetops as if hauling a vast net full of some heavy, invisible substance that seemed to want to drag them back down, but they broke away. And, you know, that sort of, to me, echoes this sort of something that's been weighing has been something kind of, like, taken from her in some ways.

Deborah Treisman

Right.

Paul Yoon

And again, echoing that kind of idea of like, what's within the skylight, what's within the frame of the window. And in that moment, I think as the helicopters sort of break away, that sort of. The idea of the frame kind of breaks apart, too.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

And that's the moment where I think the story actually kind of the canvas widens a bit. Right. Where it gets a bit bigger.

Deborah Treisman

Yes. The center doesn't hold anymore.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Deborah Treisman

In this image she's been painting.

Paul Yoon

Right. That really nice house, you know, with a gentrified neighborhood with the red door and all the beautiful. It sort of doesn't exist anymore.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah, yeah. She can't go there. She can't sleep on the couch.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, exactly.

Deborah Treisman

I suppose you could see it as. I mean, we know nothing about this narrator. We don't know what she does, where she's, you know, if her parents are alive. But I also see it as a longing for parents. You have a feeling that she's an incredibly lonely person and that she doesn't have people around her at the time, that she's friends with Roy and Mandy.

Paul Yoon

Absolutely. And also, you could argue maybe later on, too, even when she's married, she seems incredibly lonely as well, where there's a kind of remove between her and her husband. Right. It's not. Again, it's not a story that she's going to tell him. It's a story she might tell him that's really intriguing to me, this sort of narrator, who I think you're absolutely spot on, Deborah. Where there's a deep sense of loneliness, and that loneliness has continued. And her marrying this man, who we don't know anything about, either hasn't assuaged or solved that loneliness, either. Or given Her. A solution.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. Because her marriage is just. It's not what she saw with Roy and Mandy. And you feel that that's hanging over her, this image of the perfect marriage where they tell each other everything. They tell the same stories together. You know, they have the stories. We don't have a sense of that kind of shared history with the husband.

Nicole Phelps

No.

Paul Yoon

I mean, you know, all we have a sense of is his penis.

Deborah Treisman

Exactly. On a hot, sticky night.

Paul Yoon

Exactly.

Deborah Treisman

And I'm looking now just at the last line of the story, which is very complicated. Well, the last few lines, you know. So she sees Roy again, and it hurts just to look at him.

Paul Yoon

Oh, yeah, that's my favorite. I love that.

Deborah Treisman

And is that hurt? Disillusionment. Is that hurt because she still feels desire? Is that hurt about the fact that he never did come down when she was sleeping on the couch?

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely.

Deborah Treisman

It's almost like he's a bright light and she can't keep her eyes open.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a little bit of, you know, it's. There's a longing there, of course, but I think there's also, like you were saying, there's a kind of. I don't know. I think she hates him a little, too, you know.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

But I just. Yeah. It's one of my favorite lines in the story, I think, also just kind of on a technical level, you know, there are long sentences in this. There are, like, meaty, chewy long sentences in this. And so that kind of choice as a writer to. To sneak in, like, a very short sentence near the end. I think it just. It shines bright because of that, too.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. And then the last line, I still might have gone, but then I remembered that I was married now and that married people are happy.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. It's like, are you happy? How are you doing, Narrator?

Deborah Treisman

And maybe she is really happy. It's possible.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, totally.

Deborah Treisman

But I think she's repeating this kind of misconception that she's had all along, that because Roy and Mandy are married, they are happy. And that's why their breakup is so disorienting for her, because she's had this very rigid definition of them in her mind. And maybe they're bland, and maybe Mandy just wants to be good at having a body or whatever else, but they are, for her, just a sort of platonic ideal in some way, and then they fail to live up to it.

Paul Yoon

And they're a unit. Right. They're sort of. They're bonded. They're a unit. There's maybe a safety there, a rootedness. And then they're about to have a baby. And so that bond and that solidity and, you know, it's only getting stronger. Right. And maybe that's why. I don't know if that's one house. You can look at this story as kind of like two houses. Right? There's their house, Rory and Mandy's house. But then the hostel is a kind of house too. Right. And maybe still thinking about the title and sort of why Fiona chose that title, but it's sort of like maybe the hostel kind of embodies the opposite of the sturdy house with the red door and the family, you know, and the skylights.

Deborah Treisman

Well, we should take a look at the description of the hostel, the language that's used to describe it.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Deborah Treisman

When it first is mentioned, because it's almost. And to me, along with that helicopter moment, it's like a horror movie. It's like a scene out of a horror movie. You know, here's this hostel. You come across it in the dark. It's leprous with pink paint. It's being slowly devoured by night blooming jasmine, which clots the street with its creamy smell, you know, and it's huge. And it rears up suddenly from the footpath in the dark, you know, and then it's next to a churchyard where people are drinking and having sex. You know, sort of the epitome of kind of devil worshiping. It's so anthropomorphized. And then in the middle of this, there's this girl crying in the garden with so much foreboding.

Paul Yoon

And I think Mandy thinks it could even have been the growl of a possum.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah, exactly.

Quince Advertiser

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Paul Yoon

So it's not just a girl crying, there's just something again, just foreboding and just like, I don't know, it's almost like there's chaos again, like you were saying, it's almost like they're walking by a beast. Yeah, But I also think that there's some sort of odd echo to maybe the idea of a fairy tale where you have people walking and then they stumble upon something. Right?

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

Like whether they're walking in the woods or something. And then there's something that kind of feels out of place, is there? And so when that happens, like, what do the characters do?

Deborah Treisman

Right.

Paul Yoon

When they stumble upon that.

Deborah Treisman

Right. And so these two are very trusting and they take her in and they parent her in a sense. You know, Mandy gives her hugs, they reassure her, they show her their Baby pictures.

Podcast Advertiser

Right.

Deborah Treisman

Right. She says they should name their daughter after her. Also a stranger. Strange scene. A strange scene.

Paul Yoon

A scene that. That's also being interpreted by. Or we're seeing it through the lens of the narrator.

Deborah Treisman

Right? Yes.

Paul Yoon

And so, yes, you know, I think part of her, the way this narrator is sort of telling us the story, is that it's very clear that, you know, Roy is attracted to her because she's gorgeous, you know, and kind of in a vulnerable state. And maybe he's, like, turned on by that, you know, but. But then you have to ask, you know, is that an imagination that she's sort of conjured, or is that the actual. Like, what really happened? Right. And that's sort of a recurring question throughout the story in all its many layers, is what really happened?

Deborah Treisman

And maybe just the frustration that she can't know.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Deborah Treisman

She's not in the room.

Paul Yoon

She can't know. And if there are these indications that she was sort of deeply in love with Roy, or at least had very strong feelings for him, I think there's a kind of element of jealousy as well. Right. Where they take in this person. And more than once she mentions to the reader, as sort of aside, hey, I've slept on that couch too. Don't forget, I was once that girl. Right. And so there does seem to be a kind of strange jealousy there, or at least a kind of unintentional mirroring going on with her and sister.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. And so then we have the disappearance and then the discovery of the bodies.

Paul Yoon

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

And, you know, these many references which kind of, I think, go to the heart of what Fiona wanted to do in the collection as a whole, these many recountings of that story and the sort of pleasure that Roy and Mandy get from telling the story and that thrill that everyone gets from telling the story by being associated with some form of dark evil but being safe from it at the same time. And that's. You know, I think Fiona said she started writing this collection because she'd been pulled in by a true crime podcast and wanted to kind of question, why do we like true crime stories? You know, what is it about it? And there's a line that I think is really at the heart of that element of the story, which is in the final encounter with Roy, when the narrator says, I wanted to hear the story of S. One more time as told by Roy, it felt as though this might be my last chance to get close to the largeness of life, its terror and mystery, while remaining perfectly safe.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, that's Beautiful.

Deborah Treisman

Right. So there's the safety in only hearing these things or only telling these stories. You know, it's like scaring people with fairy tales or ghost stories.

Paul Yoon

Yeah. And also, very curiously, it's. I wanted to hear the story of S one more time as told by Roy, you know, no one else but Roy. And so it's Roy's version that she wants to hear in that moment.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

He.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

Which I think kind of speaks to the possibility of many versions of the story. And again, this kind of idea of what exactly is the story and how is it translated. Right.

Deborah Treisman

Yes. And of course, no one. No one in their right mind would want to hear S's version of the story.

Paul Yoon

No, no.

Deborah Treisman

Because that's too much. You're not safe anymore.

Paul Yoon

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

The thrill of this story is having sort of butted up against the horror but been untouched by it.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely right. And feeling there's a kind of safety in that. Right.

Deborah Treisman

There's a culpability, too.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

There's a slight sort of guilt in retelling the story. Right.

Paul Yoon

For an audience, which is why there's that mention. I think it's connected, where the narrator sort of mentions, you know, our wonders, whether they ever felt guilty for being so kind to us. Right. So that, you know, is it possible that that sort of made her trust strangers in Australia more?

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. Yeah. She actually blames them for getting S killed because they were too nice.

Paul Yoon

There's that hostility again.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah. Perhaps, you know, maybe it's too much of a leap, but perhaps one could extrapolate that Roy and Mandy have been very kind to her and have taken her in and yet without giving her what she actually wants.

Paul Yoon

Absolutely. And what she got was stools, which she didn't really care for.

Nicole Phelps

Exactly.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Bar stools.

Deborah Treisman

But she never got the love. She never got those forearms turned to her with love.

Paul Yoon

She never got Roy walking down the steps that night.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

No.

Paul Yoon

But again, for me as a writer, time and sort of how one presents time and timelines in fiction is something that's really important to me because I find it really challenging. And something that's really amazing about this story to me is all these multiple layers of time that's going on where it's not just the Killer Bear State Forest. It's the history of Mandy and Roy. It's the birth of Isabella. It's the history of Mandy Roy, the narrator. It's the story of the narrator and her husband. It's the story of this era of Australia with, like, you know, backpackers. And there's just so many. Again, like, so many layers of time going on in the story. And I'm just really. I admire it deeply.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

And it lends itself to this, like,

Deborah Treisman

very rich reading experience because there is no defined present.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It subverts that expectation where, you know, if you are going to. You think. If you were aware that this was a serial killer story, you'd sort of think, oh, well, we'll focus on that, or we'll focus on Daniel and S. Or, you know. But again, it just. It sort of avoids what we think of as, like, the central part of a story.

Deborah Treisman

Right. I mean, there's something less interesting about actual murder and the brutality of what was done to them.

Nicole Phelps

And.

Deborah Treisman

And she goes over it in a very factual, uninflected way. You know, he was stabbed as many times. She was shot here.

Paul Yoon

Yep.

Deborah Treisman

That part is not of interest.

Paul Yoon

Yeah.

Deborah Treisman

I mean, the killer isn't of interest. But what is of interest at the end, in hearing the story of S one more time, as told by Roy, is that at that point, it will not be Roy and Mandy's story, it will be Roy's story. Right. He's divorced, so perhaps she's hoping to find something different in it with that lens.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely. And then I think it's the page before where she's talking about, Sabina and Daniel weren't the only people who were victims of the killer. Right. There are many more. This would go on. There'd be trashy books, tv, movies about all this. The narrator says, but S was something private, a connection. She was Roy and Mandy's. She was mine. And so there's a kind of. Suddenly the story is taking this sort of turn where there's an ownership to the story, almost where she's taking it on. And, you know, by the end, yes, she wants to hear Roy's version of this story. But I almost wonder if the bigger frame is that by telling this story to us, she's suddenly taking ownership of it. Right. This is her version of the story.

Deborah Treisman

Yes. Which is ironic because she never met us.

Paul Yoon

Never met us.

Deborah Treisman

She doesn't have a version of.

Paul Yoon

And my gut says we'll never tell her husband.

Deborah Treisman

I guess it depends on how that marriage goes, if it actually is a

Paul Yoon

happy one, you know, if it depends on. It's hard to tell whether the room is two degrees cooler.

Deborah Treisman

Right, right. I mean, it may just be that, you know, she doesn't want to sort of taint him with this time in her life when she was so lonely.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Almost like a kind of protective mechanism.

Deborah Treisman

I'm trying to give a cast one nice light on this narrator.

Paul Yoon

Well, it could be just kind of like by sort of telling this to us, she's exorcising that demon. Right. And so then she'll go back to sort of being, you know, in this life where married people are happy, and it'll be okay. You know, there's a kind of hope there for her.

Deborah Treisman

And possibly she knows that telling the story is manipulative in some way or that it's prurient or somehow glamorizing violence.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, yeah.

Deborah Treisman

So maybe I'm giving her full benefit of the doubt. I felt I needed to give her an option of being a good person. Also, because I was reading a review of the book in which the reviewer said that the voice of Hostel was the closest to Fiona MacFarlane's herself. And then I thought, okay, well, she can't be all.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

But

Paul Yoon

no, no, no, that's really funny. I didn't know that. That's great.

Deborah Treisman

Yes. So that review said Riley, humorous and reflexive, she implicates herself in the grisly retelling of stories of horrific murders for entertainment. And that is what's at the heart of the book, this entertainment level.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, absolutely. And sort of then kind of. Are we culpable as well? Because we're being entertained.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Right.

Paul Yoon

Because we're reading this. And, I mean, I would obviously couldn't put hostile down, but I couldn't put Highway 13 down. So are we sort of complicit in that? Which goes back to. I think you were saying, if this was sort of inspired by Fiona listening to true crime podcasts, there's a kind of entertainment value to that, too. Right. And kind of.

Deborah Treisman

And questioning.

Paul Yoon

Yeah, and questioning the motivations behind all that. Right, yeah.

Deborah Treisman

Why we are entertained by stories of danger. And is it just schadenfreude? Is it that this didn't happen to us, or is it that where, you know, exploring the idea of evil, one of those mysteries that you were talking about?

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Exactly.

Deborah Treisman

Yeah.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Yeah.

Paul Yoon

And again, there's just so many levels and layers of mystery in this. And I'm all for it. Yeah, no, I love it.

Deborah Treisman

Did you find yourself reading the story differently when you read it in context of the book?

Paul Yoon

I think after I read the book, the story felt like the world that she had built. And the geography of this place expanded for me in all ways. But also, I think, in time, too, because the book sort of kind of jumps around in decades as well. Right. So if I'm remembering correctly. And so to have this story be just sort of one part of this grand map and these decades, I think, allowed me to feel like I had entered a much bigger world and a much more complex world with many more characters in it who, you know, for the most part, don't really overlap, which I found really interesting, too. Yeah. Which is kind of like the opposite of a hostel, right?

Deborah Treisman

Yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Paul.

Paul Yoon

Oh, thank you, Deborah. This has been unbelievable.

Deborah Treisman

Feel my McFarlane is the author of two novels, the Night Guest and the Sun Walks down and two story collections, the High Places, which won the Dylan Thomas prize, and Highway 13, a winner of the Story prize. She has been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 2013. Paul Yoon, who was one of the National Book Foundation's Five Under 35 in 2010, has published five books of fiction, including the novel Run Me to Earth and the story collection the Hive and the Honey, a winner of the Story Prize. A new novel, Aetna, will be published next month. He's been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 2023. You can download more than 220 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast or subscribe to the podcast for free and Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer, Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was Produced by John LeMay. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.

Paul Yoon

This week on the Political Scene from the New Yorker, chaos in the intelligence community.

Deborah Treisman

One of the lesser appreciated scandals of Trump's second term is how much he has looked at this huge number of 18 different intelligence agencies of the federal government as two things. One, an instrument to wreak revenge and retribution on the deep state that he thinks has been undermining him and two, as almost a vast treasure trove of documents and information just waiting to be used against his enemies.

Paul Yoon

Join me, Jane Mayer and my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos every Friday on the Political Scene. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Deborah Treisman

From prx.