Ily — Tova Mirvis

Filtered through the post-9/11 world of persistent NSA surveillance, "ILY," honored in the Best American Short Stories 2014, questions the different lives we lead in our own homes and in our own imaginations. Are they that different? Does privacy exist anymore? What can we still hide? Nora, a middle-aged woman who is ignored by her husband and tech-savvy teenage daughter, reconnects with a childhood crush via Facebook. Soon a flurry of daily text messages controls her life, and she wonders whether or not she should make her online life real. But Nora has bigger problems, and we learn that everyone in this family is straddling the line between their authentic and hidden selves. A complex, fascinating story of familial disconnection told within the larger framework of a society manipulated by propaganda, "ILY" explores what it means to live in an era where the choice to live a split existence can be undertaken with deceptive initial ease.