Sexy

An anecdote is a small and interesting story which adds relevant detail to a main topic. These feature as part of the literary landscape of “Sexy,” especially in the portrayal of the friendship between Miranda and Laxmi. The story opens with just such an anecdote: “After nine years of marriage, Laxmi told Miranda, her cousin’s husband had fallen in love with another woman” (83). The anecdotal passages, sometimes recounted in the third person, sometimes in Laxmi’s dialogue, bring a liveliness and color to the story along with a change of perspective. Laxmi’s storytelling is in this way independent of Miranda’s perspective (which otherwise predominates), allowing Laxmi’s story about her cousin’s marriage breakdown to exist as a counter to Miranda’s own affair. This creates a tension between the two stories and the contrasting moral attitudes expressed, by Laxmi verbally and by Miranda in her secret actions, about sexual infidelity.

By the time Miranda meets Laxmi’s cousin and Rohin, Miranda has already heard a series of related anecdotes about their situation and knows a lot about them. But she has seemingly been able to distance herself from the story’s clear moral pairing of her extra-marital affair with the affair affecting Laxmi’s cousin.