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The last thing I remembered was her demonstration of putting on an oxygen mask in case of emergency. Standing in front of the curtain divider separating Economy from First Class, she had mimed disaster protocol. In case of an ocean landing, the seat cushion could be used as a flotation device. I had closed my eyes then. In case of a crash, I thought, as the Ambien took effect, my husband would put the oxygen mask on me. He would inflate my seat cushion for me. We'd reconcile our marriage in the face of catastrophe.
I disembarked from the plane. Peter was not at the exit either. A welcome sign, printed in English, greeted all arriving travelers: THERE ARE NO STRANGERS IN GARBOZA.
—From Bliss Montage, a collection of short stories by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022). This segment, from the short story "Returning" (pp. 87-136), appears on page 88 of the hardcover.
I cannot remember exactly the first time I took the bus down to Oslo city centre to walk the streets of an evening, go to bars, visit pubs and cafés, but it must have been shortly after Turid marched out, the same month, most likely, and therefore one long year after the ship burned with my loved ones in it, as they put it on the news, his loved ones perished onboard a burning ship, in a cabin, in a corridor, they vanished at sea, they fell out of this life not far from a duty-free shop.
What I remember is sitting in my usual seat at the very back of the bus, on the way down from Bjølsen, Sagene, wearing my best clothes, which was my reefer jacket, the same old, but with new brass buttons I had bought from a helpful lady with needle and thread at the Button House behind the Parliament building, and every button shiny bright with an anchor stamped on it. I wore a yellow neckerchief with the knot at the back and outmoded, undramatically flared trousers to accentuate the sailor style. I was freshly showered, my hair freshly washed, I was making up for what was lost, whatever lost there was, I was thirty-eight years old, everything was blown, I had nothing left.
—From Men in My Situation, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey (Graywolf Press, 2022). The excerpt above appears on page 19 of the hardcover. This book was originally published as Menn i min situasjon in Norway in 2018 by Forlaget Oktober AS, and it was first published in English by Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House UK in 2021.
In the evening it was a little better. She could smooth it out and look at it, cautiously, hoping that someday she would have a full view of it, as if it were an unfinished, multi-colored Gobelin tapestry whose pattern would perhaps be revealed one day. The voices came back to her; with a little patience, they could be unraveled from each other like the strands of a tangled ball of yarn. She could think about the words in peace, without fearing that new ones would appear before the night was over. During this time the night held the days apart only with difficulty, and if she happened to breathe a hole into the darkness, like on a frost-covered windowpane, the morning might shine into her eyes hours ahead of time.
—From The Faces, a short novel by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally (Picador, 2022). This book was originally published in 1968 by Hasselbalch, Denmark, as Ansigterne.
I had assumed for some reason that a firing range would be outdoors, but instead it was situated in a strip mall, next to a tractor-supply store. Inside were glass display cases filled with weapons, and a wall of purses a woman could hide a dainty pistol in. This was a niche market I knew nothing about until I returned to Lisa’s house later that day and went online. There I found websites selling gun-concealing vests, T-shirts, jackets—you name it. One company makes boxer briefs with a holster in the back, which they call "Compression Concealment Shorts" but which I would call gunderpants.
—From Happy-Go-Lucky, a collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown & Company, 2022). This segment is from the essay "Active Shooter" (pp. 3-15), which first appeared in The New Yorker (July 2, 2018).
When he decided to leave New York, he chose Arizona because of some drone footage he'd seen. It wove through the canyons of red-rock mountain foothills, over sage-green scrub and towering cacti with their arms outstretched. Then up into the higher elevations, where there were forests of ponderosa pine.
—From Dinosaurs, a novel by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022).