Poetry by Edgar Kunz and Leigh Lucas, and short stories by Mary Grimm, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Bennett Sims

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He was like tissue paper
coming apart in water.
—From Fixer, a collection of poetry by Edgar Kunz (Ecco, 2023). These lines are from "Fixer" [I held him together], which was first published (as "Piano") in The New Yorker (November 7, 2022), p. 41. It appears on pages 46-47 of the paperback. 

All that week, Bob Lilly was working on the gas tank of his car, which had to be replaced. He was doing it in my driveway because he lived with his sister, and she wouldn't let him do it at her house. He was the smartest person I had ever met, which didn't mean that he was in any way a success in life or had as much sense as my cat. 
—From "Fate and Ruin," a short story by Mary Grimm, One Story, Issue 265 (May 15, 2020).

Buchi woke to the thwack-thwack of the machete in the grass and the offended clucks of the chicken who took issue with the noise. Every few moments a ping would echo as the blade struck the stucco of the house. She counted on the sharp sound to wake her daughters.  
—From What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, a collection of short stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead Books, 2017). This section is from "Buchi's Girls," which begins on page 123 of the hardcover. This particular story originally appeared in Five Points (Vol. 16, No. 3).

The boy begs his mother to buy him a balloon. As they leave the grocery store and cross the parking lot, he holds the balloon by a string in his hand. It is round and red, and it bobs a few feet above him. Suddenly his mother looks down and orders him not to release the balloon. Her voice is stern. She says that if he loses it, she will not buy him another. The boy tightens his grip on the string. He had no intention of releasing the balloon. 
—From "Fables," a short story published in White Dialogues: Stories by Bennett Sims (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), pp. 127-139 in the paperback. "Fables" was previously published in Conjunctions and Subtropics (as "The Balloon"), and anthologized in the Pushcart Prize XXXIX. I mentioned a couple of stories from one of his other books, Other Minds and Other Stories (2023), in a blog post from 2024.

I empty my pockets of odd little flyers and tear-off numbers
for pest solutions and local handymen. I save them; some
may prove critical at the end of the world.
—From "I empty my pockets of odd little flyers," a poem published in Landsickness, a chapbook of poetry by Leigh Lucas (Tupelo Press, 2024, p. 9). This poem was first published in The Tusculum Review. 

A story by George Saunders, two novels by Colm Tóibín, and essays by Melissa Broder and David Sedaris

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One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Yuman voice, making werds. They sounded grate! They sounded like prety music! I listened to those music werds until the sun went down, when all of the suden I woslike: Fox 8, crazy nut, when sun goes down, werld goes dark, skedaddle home, or else there can be danjer! 
          But I was fast and nated by those music werds, and desired to understand them total lee.
—From Fox 8, a story by George Saunders, illustrated by Chelsea Cardinal (Random House, 2013).

He must be aware that she was awake. She heard him clearing his throat. In the dark, she could let this silence go on for as long as she thought fit. She might even decide not to break it at all, fall asleep beside him and put him through another day guessing what she knew or how she would respond.  
—From Long Island, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2024). This segment is at the bottom of page 19 in the hardcover. The book is a sequel to Brooklyn, his earlier novel about Eilis Lacey. 

She drove to Cush in the old A40 one Saturday that October, leaving the boys playing with friends and telling no one where she was going. Her aim in those months, autumn leading to winter, was to manage for the boys' sake and maybe her own sake too to hold back tears. Her crying as though for no reason frightened the boys and disturbed them as they gradually became used to their father not being there. She realised now that they had come to behave as if everything were normal, as if nothing were really missing. They had learned to disguise how they felt. She, in turn, had learned to recognise danger signs, thoughts that would lead to other thoughts. She measured her success with the boys by how much she could control her feelings.  
—From Nora Webster, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2014). This segment is from page 7. (Eilis Lacey's family members play a very small role in this book as well.)  

I have never told the story of my husband’s illness. His illness is not my illness, and so I did not think it was my story to tell. But the illness is a third party in our relationship. I have been in a relationship with the illness for eleven years. So in this way, perhaps, it is my story too.
          In the past, my husband has said that he would prefer not to be a subject of my writing. But he has also said that he would never want to censor me. He says, Do what you need to do for art.
—From So Sad Today, a collection of personal essays by Melissa Broder (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2016). This is the opening of "I Told You Not to Get the Knish: Thoughts on Open Marriage and Illness." It appears on pages 155-181 of the paperback. A longer excerpt is available on LitHub.   

Bonus book to read again: 

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. "Goddammit," I whispered. "I knew I forgot something." 
          Normally, when landing in a foreign country, I'm prepared to say, at the very least, "Hello," and "I'm sorry." This trip, though, was a two-parter, and I'd used my month of prep time to bone up on my Japanese. 
—From Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, a collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2013). This segment is from "Easy, Tiger," which appears on pages 77-86 of the original hardcover and was originally published in The New Yorker. As always, if you have the option, I recommend listening to an audiobook of David Sedaris reading his own work and/or seeing him read live.  

A poem by Lauren Aliza Green, novels by Georgi Gospodinov and Kevin Barry, a short story by Matthew Klam, and a memoir by Abigail Thomas

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I refused to throw out 
a single one— 
eggs, milk, Wonder Bread— 
the tiny blue checks 
like a secret code, . . . 
—From "My Mother's Handwritten Grocery Lists," a poem by Lauren Aliza Green, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Fall 2024).  

Years later, when many of his memories had already scattered like frightened pigeons, he could still go back to that morning when he was wandering aimlessly through the streets of Vienna, and a vagrant with a mustache like García Márquez's was selling newspapers on the sidewalk in the early March sun. A wind blew up and several of the newspapers swirled into the air. He tried to help, chasing down two or three and returning them. You can keep one, said Márquez.
          Gaustine, that's what we'll call him, even though he himself used the name like an invisibility cloak, took the newspaper and handed the man a banknote, a rather large one for the occasion.
—From Time Shelter, a novel by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Liveright Publishing Corporation/W. W. Norton & Company, 2022). It was originally published as Времеубежище (Janet 45, 2020).

It is night in the old Spanish port of Algeciras. . . . Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond sit on a bench just a few yards west of the hatch. They are in their low fifties. . . . Maurice Hearne's jaunty, crooked smile will appear with frequency. His left eye is smeared and dead, the other oddly bewitched, as though with an excess of life, for balance. He wears a shabby suit, an open-necked black shirt, white runners and a derby hat perched high on the back of his head. Dudeish, at one time, certainly, but past it now. 
—From Night Boat to Tangier, a novel by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, 2019). The paperback was released by Vintage in 2020. 

My daughter walked into the house with a boy named Brendan. She came into the kitchen limping a little, her mascara smeared, and lay down on the floor in front of the stove. I was dipping a cookie in icing, checking the color to see if it needed more green. Every year, in December, our block had a Christmas-cookie swap, a ritual that had become one of the less disgusting parts of the holiday season. 
—From "The Other Party," a short story by Matthew Klam, The New Yorker (December 19, 2022), pp. 50-59.

Sitting with the dogs, drinking coffee, listening to the weather. Snow out there. "Wind chill warnings for today and tomorrow," says the reporter, "Most at risk, children and the elderly." At first the word "elderly" conjures up someone thin, frail, someone I might help across a busy street. Someone else. A moment passes before I realize, with a jolt, that I'm elderly. I don't feel elderly. I feel like myself, only more so. 
—From Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Golden Notebook Press, 2023). It appears that Scribner just released (re-released?) this essay collection in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats on November 19, 2024.  

Fiction by Ayşegül Savaş and Melissa Broder, a memoir by Jill Ciment, and poetry by Edgar Kunz and Diane Seuss

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On the phone, my grandmother asked me if I had planted anything in our window boxes. She always phoned too early, when I was barely out of bed, forgetting about the time difference. She would begin each call with something she had thought of during the night. 
—From The Anthropologists, a novel by Ayşegül Savaş (Bloomsbury, 2024). This segment is from page 10 of the hardcover. 

What do I call him? My husband? Arnold? I would if the story were about how we met and married, shared meals for forty-five years, raised a puppy, endured illnesses. But if the story is about an older man preying on a teenager, shouldn’t I call him “the artist” or, better still, “the art teacher,” with all that the word teacher implies?
—From Consent, a memoir by Jill Ciment (Pantheon Books, 2024). This is essentially a sequel to Half a Life, the memoir Ciment wrote in her mid-forties. It's interesting to see how she looks at the events of her past through different lenses. (When she met her future husband, in the 1970s, he was a Casanova and she felt cool for kissing her art teacher. Today, what happened is more clearly an abuse of power. But it didn't happen now; it happened in the '70s.) What to make of the events, then, especially in light of the way their relationship ultimately played out? After dissecting and amending the earlier memoir, she picks up where it left off.   

I held him together
as long as I could, she says.
—From "Piano," a poem by Edgar Kunz, The New Yorker (November 7, 2022), p. 41.

even i am less a woman than a ball of mercury breaking
into forty pieces of silver.
—From "i lie back on my red coverlet and contemplate," a poem by Diane Seuss, Blackbird, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 2007), and reprinted with artwork by Tanja Softić in Blackbird's special section called Women Poets from the Archive, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 2024). This specially curated collection of poems from the Founders Archive also includes poetry by Ada Limón, Claudia Emerson, and others.

It didn't matter where I lived—Mid-City, Mid-Wilshire, or Miracle Mile. It didn't matter where I worked; one Hollywood bullshit factory was equal to any other. All that mattered was what I ate, when I ate, and how I ate it.
—From Milk Fed, a novel by Melissa Broder (Scribner, 2021). I read her books out of order, starting with Death Valley (Scribner, 2023), then going back to The Pisces (Hogarth Press, 2018) and Milk Fed. All of these novels are available as audiobooks read by the author, and they are compulsively readable (and . . . listenable?). Broder does include intimate details about her characters' experiences in the bathroom and the bedroom (and everywhere else), so if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to skip these. But there's something very direct and honest about the way she talks about things. Also, it might be helpful to read a little Sappho before starting The Pisces. 

The Fall 2024 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2024 issue of the Apple Valley Review features flash fiction by Mary Grimm; short stories by Franz Jørgen Neumann and Anna Gáspár-Singer (translated from the Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess); a piece of creative nonfiction by Annabel Jankovic; and poetry by Judith Harris, Michael Diebert, Lulu Liu, Susan Johnson, Svetlana Litvinchuk, Zhang Zhihao (translated from the Mandarin by Yuemin He), Triin Paja, Susana H. Case, and Jeff Mock. The cover artwork is by Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.org. 

Memoirs by Leslie Jamison and David Sedaris, a short story by Caki Wilkinson, a novel by Elisa Shua Dusapin, and extras

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Of course I’d heard babies were always waking up. But this now seemed like a joke. How did anyone get them to sleep in the first place? Every time I put the baby in her bassinet, she cried and cried. She slept only when she was being held. 
—From Splinters, a memoir by Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown and Company, 2024). If you have access to it, Hachette Audio released an unabridged audiobook, narrated by the author, which is excellent. In January 2024, The New Yorker included an edited excerpt from this memoir in the Personal History section.

Here are a few links to items referenced in the memoir, to accompany you as you read and/or listen:

- A clip from "Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable," the episode of the PBS show American Masters about American street photographer Garry Winogrand (Season 33, Episode 6). Many of his photographs are available online if you search his name.

- The Maggie B., a children's picture book by Irene Haas (Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster, 1975).  

- "Inside the Apple," a poem by Yehuda Amichai, translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch, from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (University of California Press, 1996).

It's several hours after my sister's wedding reception and I'm sitting next to Dave, the hotel bartender, on the loveseat in his room, which looks just like my room but backwards. We're watching Cash or Crash and missing the questions that would make us rich. Our outer knees are touching. 
—From "A Little Bit of a Scene," a piece of flash fiction by Caki Wilkinson, The Hopkins Review, web feature.  

They don't seem to be expecting me. The man in the ticket booth checks the list of names for the hundredth time. He's just ushered out a group of women, all with the same muscular build, their hair scraped back. . . . I'm here for the costumes, I tell him again. In the end he turns away, stares at a television screen. He probably doesn't understand English, I think to myself. I sit down on my suitcase, try calling Leon, the director, the one I've been corresponding with. My phone battery flashes low, only three percent left. I hear myself laugh nervously as I look around for somewhere to charge it. 
—From Vladivostok Circus, a novel by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter Books, 2024). Originally published in French by Éditions Zoé (2023) and in English, in the United Kingdom, by Daunt Book Originals (2023).   

Bonus book to read again: 

As with pot, it was astonishing how quickly I took to cigarettes. It was as if my life was a play, and the prop mistress had finally shown up. Suddenly there were packs to unwrap, matches to strike, ashtrays to fill and then empty. My hands were at one with their labor, the way a cook's might be, or a knitter's. 
—From When You Are Engulfed in Flames, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008). This segment is from "The Smoking Section," a lengthy essay that closes the book and which appears on pages 240-323 of the original hardcover. (The cover of the paperback being sold now is decidedly different. The original cover, which I really like, incorporates Van Gogh's Skull with Cigarette, 1885.) Also, if you have the option, I always recommend listening to David Sedaris read his books himself and/or seeing him read live. 

A novel by Geetanjali Shree, a novel excerpt by Susan Minot, and stories by Uche Okonkwo, Akhil Sharma, and Alejandro Zambra

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Of course Beti had heard; the ears on one's back are rarely blocked. And indeed, her friend may or may not have been aware of the household's quirks. Whether or not the chrysanthemums heard, it made no difference to them. It was their season, they were enjoying leaping up at the slightest thing, and so continued on with this pastime. 
—From Tomb of Sand, a novel by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (HarperVia, 2023). This segment is from page 29 of the hardcover. The book was originally published in Hindi as Ret Samadhi in India (Rajkamal Prakashan, 2018) and was originally published in English as Tomb of Sand in the United Kingdom (Tilted Axis Press, 2021). The translation of this novel is quite long, with a lot of wordplay and tangential flights of fancy. My favorite sections are about the chrysanthemums, the crows, and Ma's friend Rosie Bua.  

Udoka was disappointed to find that her prospective in-laws' house wasn't two stories tall, with a uniformed guard and a big gate to keep out prying eyes. But though not as impressive as Udoka had imagined, it was still a better house than her mother's. It was painted, for one, and the corrugated roof wasn't coming apart with rust.
—From "Nwunye Belgium," the opening story of A Kind of Madness, a short story collection by Uche Okonkwo (Tin House, 2024). "Nwunye Belgium" was first published, as "Our Belgian Wife," in One Story, Issue 248 (December 20, 2018) and was reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading (Mariner Books, 2019).  

She did not hesitate now. She phoned Dr. Rosencrantz. But Dr. Rosencrantz was not the doctor on call, the answering service said. A Dr. Estin answered. He sounded as if he was outside. She heard a bird singing. Dr. Estin was decidedly unconcerned, and even over the phone she could tell he was bored. It was perfectly normal, he explained, to cough up a little blood after a tonsillectomy. It was nothing to worry about. He seemed irritated that she was even bothering him. 
—From "The Operation," a novel excerpt by Susan Minot, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 2 (August 9, 2024). This story also has an illustration by Michelle Thompson.

Mrs. Narayan was small, dark-skinned, oval-faced. She had a wonderful singsong voice. She'd come up to you at temple on Holi or Diwali and offer congratulations so heartfelt you'd feel as if it were the first time the day had ever been celebrated. We all liked her. She was an immigrant, too, but she didn't seem to have jangled nerves the way we did. She cooked for many of us and regularly tried to refuse payment. "This is from my side," she'd say. "A horse can't be friends with grass," we might answer.
—From "The Narayans," a short story by Akhil Sharma, The New Yorker (August 26, 2024).

The first lie Julio told Emilia was that he had read Marcel Proust. He didn't usually lie about his reading, but that second night, when they both knew they were starting something, and that however long it lasted, this something was going to be important—that night, Julio deepened his voice, feigning intimacy, and said that, yes, he had read Proust when he was seventeen, during a summer in Quintero. 
—From Bonsai, a very short novel by Alejandro Zambra, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Penguin, 2022). Originally published in Barcelona, Spain, as Bonsái (Editorial Anagrama, 2006).