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Carve Magazine: One Hundred Santas
By Liz Skillman

Liz Skillman’s One Hundred Santas is a precautionary tale of the dangers of living a life based too heavily on some intangible idea rather than reality. It warns that there is just as much risk in inaction as there is in action.

This compelling short story starts out in a very strange way that forces the reader sit up and take notice. Gilbert, the protagonist, is mentioned in the first sentence and then we immediately jump into the story within a story that is his first screenplay, Behold! Gilbert, the son of a Jewish mother and a fallen-Catholic father, grows up with his younger brother Samuel in a non-religious home in the East Village. Despite his family’s atheism, young Gilbert becomes obsessed with “the magic of Christmas” through TV shows and movies such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life. It becomes his dream to write the next great American Christmas movie.

Behold! is his first stab at it. He writes it upon graduation from CCNY. No one is interested in the script but Gilbert is undeterred. He continues writing Christmas screenplays while working at Kim’s Video. There he meets a punk rocker named Ritchie who becomes his friend and confidant.

For a dozen years Gilbert leads a quiet, solitary life, warmed by his belief in the miraculous power of the Christmas season. Then an all-American girl from Iowa named Jillie moves into his building. She’s an aspiring actress. Gilbert befriends her and his feelings for are more than platonic. However, he treats her like his cherished concept of Christmas, something to be loved from afar.

Making it in New York proves tough for Jillie. She gets rejected for part after part while working as a waitress to pay the bills. She starts drinking more and more to deal with the disappointment and has a string of meaningless relationships with men while she waits for Gilbert to make a move.

Putting too much faith in an idea has tragic results for Gilbert. His belief in “the magic of Christmas” is destroyed forever when he fails to take decisive action. But out of his despair, Gilbert ultimately finds something real to believe in.

This is not a perfect story. The pacing is uneven. Story lines, such as Gilbert’s family, dissipate without explanation (what happened to his father?). And Jillie was the only character that received any kind of a physical description. However, the story draws you in because you care about the characters and what happens to them. In addition, there’s an authenticity about One Hundred Santas that I believe is vital to any piece of fiction. This story won 3rd Place in the 2007 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and I can see what the judges liked about. Liz Skillman is currently working on her first novel. I’ll be interested to see how she handles the longer format.

Read the story and share your thought.

About the Reviewer
Peter Simon is a 37-year-old, married man living on the Upper West Side. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota he and his wife moved out to New York about three and a half years ago. He has been working in video and film production and has been writing as a hobby for the the past two or three years. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Spanish.

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