Poetry by Louise Glück, memoirs by Abigail Thomas and Busy Philipps, stories by Amparo Dávila, and a novel by Anne Tyler

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It's not easy to pluck individual poems from her books, since Glück was particularly adept at conceiving of book-length sequences—each of her collections is best encountered as a whole, like a Pink Floyd album that doesn't readily yield a hit single.
—From "Five Louise Glück Poems to Get You Started," an article by Gregory Cowles, The New York Times (October 13, 2023). Louise Glück died earlier in October at the age of eighty. My favorite of the poems Cowles singled out was "Matins," which begins with these lines: 

I see it is with you as with the birches:
I am not to speak to you
in the personal way. 

The full poem, "Matins" (meaning "Mornings" in French), is available online from the archive of the Los Angeles Times (September 20, 1992). It, along with others of the same title, is included in her collection The Wild Iris (Ecco, 1993). 

We met in 1979. I was thirty-seven; he was twenty-seven. I had been twice divorced and had four children, Chuck was happily married and had none. I was working at a publishing company as a slush reader, which meant I handled everything that came without an agent. He took over my job because I had been promoted to editorial assistant. . . . It was my job to train him, but all I wanted to do was make him laugh. He was good-looking and nervous, an interesting combination. 
—From What Comes Next and How to Like It, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Scribner, 2015). This segment is from "When It Started" (pp. 6-7). There is also an excellent unabridged audiobook version, which is narrated by the author (Simon & Schuster Audio Editions, 2015). 

"Just as the police van pulls up we could see you coming around the corner in your diaper. And there was a woman on a bike behind you." 
—From This Will Only Hurt a Little, a memoir by Busy Philipps (hardcover, Touchstone, 2018; paperback, Gallery Books, 2019). Sometimes a good audiobook is a nice accompaniment to the print book, but in this case, if you have the option, just jump straight to the audiobook. It is narrated by Busy Philipps and is entertaining and sometimes poignant (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2018). My favorite story is in the chapter called "Your Ex Lover Is Dead - Stars." It would probably also be funny on the page, but her delivery is everything here. A sample of the audiobook is available on the website for Simon & Schuster.

He awoke in a hospital, in a small room where everything was white and spotlessly clean, among oxygen tanks and bags of intravenous fluid, unable to move or speak, no visitors allowed.
—From The Houseguest, a collection of ominous little stories by Amparo Dávila, translated from the Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson (New Directions, 2018). This excerpt is from the final story of Dávila's collection, "The Funeral."  

Bonus book to read again: 

My brother Jeremy is a thirty-eight-year-old bachelor who never did leave home. Long ago we gave up expecting very much of him, but still he is the last man in our family and you would think that in time of tragedy he might pull himself together and take over a few of the responsibilities. Well, he didn't. 
—From Celestial Navigation, a novel by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).

A novel by Paul Murray, a poem by Diane Seuss, short stories by Jess Walter, and memoirs by Stephanie Foo and Frank McCourt

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She didn't want to devalue her mother in Elaine's eyes. At the same time, she didn't know how Elaine could think Imelda had mystique. To spend time with her mother was to get a running commentary on the contents of her mind – an incessant barrage of thoughts and sub-thoughts and random observations, each in itself insignificant but cumulatively overwhelming. I must book you in for electrolysis for that little moustache you're getting, she'd say; and then while you were still reeling, Are those tulips or begonias? There's Marie Devlin, do you know she has no sense of style, none whatsoever. Is that man an Arab? This place is filling up with Arabs. Where's this I saw they had that nice chutney? Kay Connor told me Anne Smith's lost weight but the doctor said it was the wrong kind. I thought it was supposed to be sunny today, that's not one bit sunny. Who invented chutney, was it Gorbachev? And on, and on – listening to her was like walking through a blizzard, a storm of frenzied white nothings that left you snow-blind.
—From The Bee Sting, a novel by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). This segment is from page 7 of the hardcover. 

I’d just brushed the dog, there on the dog's couch.
I was wearing a black—well, to call it a gown is a criminal
overstatement—a black rag. 
—From "Gertrude Stein," a poem by Diane Seuss, The New Yorker (August 16, 2021), p. 52.

Another time, when I went into a bar near my apartment to pick him up, he raised his glass as I approached. "Another one of these," he said. I could see he had no idea who I was. 
          "Dad? I'm not the bartender. It's Jay. Your son." 
          He stared at me. He was quiet a moment. Then: "Why don't you ever bring girlfriends home?"
          So. This was to be our Sisyphean hell—me coming out to my fading father every day for the rest of his life.
—From The Angel of Rome, a collection of short stories by Jess Walter (HarperCollins, 2022). My favorites were probably "Mr. Voice" (first published in Tin House and then in Best American Short Stories 2015) and the story excerpted above, "Town & Country," which appeared on pages 149-174 in the hardcover (from Scribd Originals, 2020).

My troop leader pulled out her guitar . . . As we sang, all the mothers became misty-eyed, stroking their daughters' hair, kissing the tops of their heads. The other girls leaned into their embraces. My mother did not touch me but stood alone and wept loudly. She cried all the time in the privacy of our home—ugly, bent-in-half sobs—but she never fell apart in public, and the sight alarmed me.
—From What My Bones Know, a memoir by Stephanie Foo (Ballantine Books, 2022). There is also an unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author (Random House Audio). A short excerpt from the book and a sample of the audiobook are available at the link above.

Bonus book to read again: 

My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone. 
—From Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner, 1996). If you have the option, I highly recommend listening to the unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author. He was an excellent speaker, and the audiobook really captures that. 

The Fall 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review features flash fiction by Jackie Sabbagh and Scott F. Gandert; a short story by J. Malcolm Garcia; a novel excerpt by Philippe Forest (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer); a memoir excerpt by Dato Turashvili (translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs with Lia Shartava and Elizabeth Scott Tervo); poetry by Mickie Kennedy, Eric Roy, Nadja Küchenmeister (translated from the German by Aimee Chor), Vernon Mukumbi, Marty Krasney, Megan Willburn, Theodora Ziolkowski, and Lynne Knight; and cover artwork by German painter Karl Friedrich Lessing.

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.com.

Novels by Jhumpa Lahiri and Francesca Ekwuyasi, short stories by Polly Rosenwaike, and memoir by Abigail Thomas

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East of the Tolly Club, after Deshapran Sashmal Road splits in two, there is a small mosque. A turn leads to a quiet enclave. A warren of narrow lanes and modest middle-class homes.  
—From The Lowland, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013; paperback Vintage, 2014). 

She came back down a few hours later to buy gum from the 7-Eleven down the street. As she was heading out the door, Jasmine waved her notebook. "I guess I could share the field notes I wrote about you today."
          Leah was suddenly nervous about what this undersized investigator might have to say about her disheveled appearance. But she believed in empirical evidence. "Sure, if you want." 
          Jasmine read from the notebook. "She is wearing a blue-and-green-striped shirt. I want a shirt like that. She is wearing jeans with a hole in one knee. She is wearing muddy shoes. It's raining so why didn't she wear boots? Maybe she is sick today because she looks white. I mean whiter than normal. I hope she feels better." Jasmine closed the notebook. "I might do a sketch later."  
—From Look How Happy I'm Making You, a collection of short stories about pregnancy and new motherhood by Polly Rosenwaike (Doubleday, 2019). This section is from "Field Notes," which appears on pages 16-30 in the hardcover and which was first published as "Laboratory on the Moon" in WomenArts Quarterly Journal (Summer 2013). 

Later he built her a special platform so she could knead her bread more comfortably, with no strain on her back. She loved to bake, and he loved her anadama bread. His eyes would close when he put a piece in his mouth and stay closed while he ate. They had a big window installed in the kitchen that looked into the woods. In the fall afternoons she used to watch them empty of their light like a glass of bourbon slowly being filled to the brim. 
—From Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, a book by Abigail Thomas (hardcover Alfred A. Knopf, 2000; paperback Anchor Books, 2001). This segment is from "Chaos," pages 62-63 in the paperback. (Anne Lamott's blurb referred to this book as "Not so much memoir as a stained-glass window of scenes garnered from a life," which I think is an excellent description of it.) 

I live in a cozy house with pretty furniture. Time passes here. There is a fireplace and two acres and the dogs run around and dig big holes and I don't care. . . . Rich is lodged in a single moment and it never tips into the next. Last week I lay on his bed in the nursing home and watched him. I was out of his field of vision and I think he forgot I was there.
—From A Three Dog Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Harcourt, 2006). This is from the beginning of the opening essay, "What Stays the Same."

By the time Taiye had rubbed oil into her skin and pulled on a longsleeved linen kaftan, the cakes were done, and her mother was awake. Taiye found Kambirinachi sitting on the kitchen counter, with a vacant smile on her face as she stirred milk into a white mug filled with hot cocoa. Coca-Cola was on the floor, batting at her swinging legs.
          “Mami, good morning.” Taiye smiled and kissed her mother’s warm forehead.
—From Butter Honey Pig Bread, a debut novel by Francesca Ekwuyasi (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). I did not read this book; I listened to an audiobook version narrated by Amaka Umeh (Bespeak Audio Editions, 2021). 

Short fiction by Tove Ditlevsen and Hiroko Oyamada, and novels by María José Ferrada, Alina Bronsky, and Elisa Shua Dusapin

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She closed her eyes and heard Hanne's voice from the kitchen. She was sitting drinking coffee with the children, fresh and in good moods, while the record player from her son's bedroom babbled some vacuous pop melody. All day long there was a cacophony around this difficult young woman, whom Helene was constantly on the brink of firing, though it hadn't amounted to anything yet. 
—From The Trouble with Happiness, a collection of short stories by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman. This book was originally published in Danish as Paraplyen (The Umbrella) and Den onde lykke (The Trouble with Happiness) (Hasselbalch: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1952 and 1963). The English translation was first published in Great Britain by Penguin Random House (2022) and in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2022). The collection is also available as an audiobook, narrated by Stine Wintlev, from Macmillan Audio.

This segment is from my favorite story in the collection, "The Little Shoes" (pp. 142-152 in the hardcover). It was first published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review. 

My other favorite, "The Knife," was first published in English in the Fall 2020 issue of the Apple Valley Review. This was the last issue of the journal published in our original format. "The Knife" appears on pages 95-103 of the hardcover version of The Trouble with Happiness. 

Ramón climbed up the Coca-Cola billboard near the highway one Monday. That evening, as the sun was disappearing behind the hills that surround the housing complex, he decided he would stay. Even though it was late, the air was still warm. It was a heat that seemed even drier in this patch of the city, which had missed out on its share of pavement and trees because there had not been enough to spare.
—From How to Turn into a Bird, a novel by María José Ferrada, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer (Tin House, 2022). This book was previously published as El hombre del cartel (2021).

In Germany, Grandmother took me to the pediatrician. Actually, she explained to me on the way, this was the real reason for our emigration: to finally be able to take me to an upstanding doctor for treatment, one who could give hope to me—and more importantly, to her—that I might survive into adulthood, even if it meant Grandmother would have a millstone around her neck for decades.
—From My Grandmother's Braid, a novel by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2021). This book was originally published in German as Der Zopf meiner Großmutter (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Köln, Germany, 2019). 

I arrive at my grandparents' place to find my grandmother seated on the floor in the living room surrounded by her Playmobil figures. She's removed all their hair. They smile vacantly.
—From The Pachinko Parlor, a novel by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter, 2022). This book was originally published in French as Les Billes du Pachinko (Éditions Zoé, 2018). First published in the UK by Daunt Books Publishing (2022). 

When we got to Urabe's place, the old shop sign was still up over the door: WORLD OF WATER—RARE AND EXOTIC FISH. It was too dark to see anything through the window. There was some kind of plastic sheet hanging up on the other side of the glass. Saiki pushed the button on the intercom, then we went around the side and up the stairs to Urabe's apartment. 
—From Weasels in the Attic, a short book containing three linked stories by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (New Directions, 2022). This segment is from the first story, "Death in the Family," on p. 5 of the paperback. The stories in Weasels in the Attic were originally published by Shinchosa Publishing Co., Tokyo, in 2012, 2013, and 2014. 

An essay by Devon Geyelin, novels by Yūko Tsushima and Amy Tan, a memoir by Amy Bloom, and a poem by Jane Hirshfield

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I first wrote this while I sat in bed in the months after, once he wasn't there anymore and I was upset. Initially it was very long, maybe a hundred pages, or more than that. It had a part where we were friends, and a part where we dated, and a part where we stopped, and then the attack. 
—From "Friendship," an essay by Devon Geyelin, The Paris Review (online July 25, 2023). 

The apartment had windows on all sides.
          I spent a year there, with my little daughter, on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. We had the whole fourth floor to ourselves, plus the rooftop terrace. At street level there was a camera shop; the second and third floors were both divided into two rented offices.
—From Territory of Light, a short, atmospheric novel by Yuko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). (Note: If you are looking for this book or others by the same author, her name in English is alternately stylized as Yuko Tsushima and Yūko Tsushima.) The English translation was previously published in Great Britain (Penguin Books Ltd., 2018), and this quote is from a paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2019. An unabridged audiobook version of the English translation, narrated by Rina Takasaki, is also available (Macmillan Audio, 2019). 

Territory of Light was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzō (July 1978-June 1979). The story takes place over the course of a year, and the release of the twelve chapters marked the months in real time. It was then published in book form in Japan as Hikari no Ryōbun (Kodansha Ltd., 1979). 

Helen thinks all her decisions are always right, but really, she is only lucky. For over fifty years I have seen this happen, how her foolish thinking turns into good fortune. It was like that at lunch yesterday. "Winnie-ah," she said. "Have more chicken." I told Helen I did not want to eat any more funeral leftovers—five days was enough. So we went shopping at Happy Super, deciding what new things to eat for last night's dinner.
          Helen picked out a flat fish, pom-pom fish, she called it, only a dollar sixty-nine a pound, bargain bin. 
          And I said, "This kind of bargain you don't want. Look at his eye, shrunken in and cloudy-looking. That fish is already three days old."
          But Helen stared at that fish eye and said she saw nothing wrong. So I picked up that fish and felt its body slide between my fingers, a fish that had slipped away from life long time ago. Helen said it was a good sign—a juicy, tender fish!
          . . .
          She bought that three-day-old fish, the dinner I ate at her house last night. . . . 
          I tell you, that fish made me so mad. It was sweet. It was tender. Only one dollar sixty-nine a pound. I started to think, Maybe Helen went back to Happy Super and exchanged that fish. But then I thought, Helen is not that clever. And that's when I remembered something. Even though Helen is not smart, even though she was born poor, even though she has never been pretty, she has always had luck pour onto her plate, even spill from the mouth of a three-day-old fish. 
—From The Kitchen God's Wife, a novel by Amy Tan (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1991). The section above is from the beginning of chapter 3, pages 67-68 of the mass market paperback (Ivy Books/Ballantine Books/Random House, 1992). The novel was reissued by Penguin in 2006.

When we moved to a small Connecticut village in 2014, Brian was invited to join a men's book club. He was dubious because they seemed to prefer nonfiction and he did not, but he was pleased to be asked and he went regularly. He suggested a novel whenever it was his turn to suggest. They asked him why he wanted to be in their book club and he said, I love a good read and I love intimacy. He was pleased that they looked shocked, and he felt that he'd announced himself properly. 
—From In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom (Random House, 2022). This segment appears on page 15 of the hardcover. The audiobook version, available from Random House Audio, features Amy Bloom reading the book herself. 

In Amy Bloom's memoir, she quotes the last line from "Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World," a poem by Jane Hirshfield, which begins with this: 

If the gods bring to you 
a strange and frightening creature, 
accept the gift 
as if it were one you had chosen.

Poetry by Aliyah Cotton and Roxanne Cardona, and short fiction by Haruki Murakami, Lucas Flatt, and Christopher Ghattas

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For example, I puffed on my inhaler
and watched the unnamed smoke creep
under my bedroom door as the music and
the loud voices boomed down the hall.
I knew never to call 911.
—From "evidence for the necessity of my removal by child protective services," a poem by Aliyah Cotton, Rust & Moth (Spring 2023).  

That Sunday, I went to my girlfriend's house to pick her up. We went on dates pretending we were going to the library to study, so I always put various study-related items in my shoulder bag to keep up the facade. Like a novice criminal making up a flimsy alibi. 
          I rang the bell over and over, but no one answered. I paused for a while, then rang it again, repeatedly, until I finally heard someone moving slowly toward the door. It was my girlfriend's older brother. 
—From "With the Beatles," a short story from First Person Singular, a collection of eight stories by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021). The book was originally published in Tokyo, Japan, as Ichininsho Tansu (Bungei Shunju Ltd., 2020). A slightly different version of "With the Beatles" was published, with an illustration by Adrian Tomine, in The New Yorker (February 17 and 24, 2020). The excerpt above is from the hardcover book (p. 93). 

Of course, with the students, they’re mostly not dumb enough to think they’ll have writing careers, or else they've self-published fifteen sci-fi novels since they graduated high school two months ago. (That guy doesn't seem the least bit anxious; he's got deadlines to meet.) Once upon a time, I smoked pot and if I wanted to describe a flowering pocomoke crepe myrtle shimmering fuchsia in a dry ditch, I did it without looking up "flowering bushes" and wondering where all the time went.
—From "Reflections After Googling 'How to Be Less Anxious About My Writing Career' and Finding the Same Bullshit I Tell My Composition Students," fiction by Lucas Flatt, Maudlin House (June 22, 2023).  

My father says my problems are not problems. 
          What do you know? I think.
          "What do you mean?" I say.
          He turns to me. He grumbles about his car engine and his dead wife and something called a praws tate.
          "My dead mother, you mean."
—From "Plums," a piece of flash fiction by Christopher Ghattas, StreetLit (April 21, 2023). 

I am early. Take out my keys. Three women at the end of their evening's
work, in a tangle of sprawl, languish on the hood of a nearby car. 
—From "Welcome to Summer School," a poem by Roxanne Cardona, San Antonio Review (June 21, 2023).  

Short stories and flash fiction by Parker Young, novels by Barbara Kingsolver and Gabriel García Márquez, and a bonus book to read again

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I decided to throw the chicken sandwich away but couldn't bring myself to touch it, the first step in the throwing-away process proved impossible, so I sat there while it sat there too, me in my chair, the sandwich on my plate, both of us in the kitchen listening to my wife talk or cry softly in the bedroom, where I pretended to sleep every night but couldn’t for no reason, no reason at all.
—From "Chicken Marriage Sandwich," a story by Parker Young, Always Crashing Magazine (May 22, 2022).  

In Bora Bora, crabs do the work of rodents at night, patrolling the gutters with a percussive, mechanical menace. Dogs sleep inches from the road; it looks like they've been struck down by careless drivers. I almost hit some of them myself in our rented Fiat Panda because I was attempting to learn, under [my brother-in-law] Harrison's tutelage, how to operate a manual transmission. I made the Panda lurch erratically around the road that circumvolves the island, like a model train powered by a sketchy generator, which was pretty close to the real situation mechanically, as Harrison kept trying to explain to me by repeating the story of the clutch and the drivetrain, the clutch and the drivetrain, a meaningless story, impossible to visualize, which I never even began to understand. While everyone else on the island only appeared to be driving recklessly (it was ultimately a sign of their mastery), I was actually doing it, because I had too much to think about all at once—the clutch, the gas, my error in taking this one-week job as Harrison's assistant—and it was embarrassing.  
—From "Disappearances," a story by Parker Young, from his debut collection of short fiction, Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane (Future Tense Books, 2023). I originally discovered this book via a list of new fiction, which led me to read "Chicken Marriage Sandwich," which was published in Always Crashing (see above). I liked the story so much that I ordered a copy of Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane. (Interestingly, the version of "Chicken Marriage Sandwich" that appears in the book is quite different. I definitely recommend reading the version in Always Crashing, even if you do read, or have already read, the collection.) This story, "Disappearances," is on pages 93-101 of the book. This particular segment appears on pages 94-95. I was making a list of my other favorite stories from the collection, but it ended up being too long. (I will single out "Repentance Rebate" and "Two Bathtubs in Memphis.") 

First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it.
          On any other day they'd have seen her outside on the deck of her trailer home, good neighbors taking notice, pestering the tit of trouble as they will. All through the dog-breath air of late summer and fall, cast an eye up the mountain and there she'd be, little bleach-blonde smoking her Pall Malls, hanging on that railing like she's captain of her ship up there and now might be the hour it's going down. This is an eighteen-year-old girl we're discussing, all on her own and as pregnant as it gets. The day she failed to show, it fell to Nance Peggot to go bang on the door, barge inside, and find her passed out on the bathroom floor with her junk all over the place and me already coming out. A slick fish-colored hostage picking up grit from the vinyl tile, worming and shoving around because I'm still inside the sack that babies float in, pre-real-life.
          Mr. Peggot was outside idling his truck, headed for evening service, probably thinking about how much of his life he'd spent waiting on women. His wife would have told him the Jesusing could hold on a minute, first she needed to go see if the little pregnant gal had got herself liquored up again. Mrs. Peggot being a lady that doesn't beat around the bushes and if need be, will tell Christ Jesus to sit tight and keep his pretty hair on. She came back out yelling for him to call 911 because a poor child is in the bathroom trying to punch himself out of a bag.
—From Demon Copperhead, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2022), winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
          He found the corpse covered with a blanket on the campaign cot where he had always slept, and beside it was a stool with the developing tray he had used to vaporize the poison. On the floor, tied to a leg of the cot, lay the body of a black Great Dane with a snow-white chest, and next to him were the crutches.  
—From Love in the Time of Cholera, a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). The book was originally published in Colombia as El amor en los tiempos del cólera in 1985.  

Bonus book to read again: 

That was the spring that Ian's brother fell in love. Up till then Danny had had his share of girlfriends—various decorative Peggies or Debbies to hang upon his arm—but somehow nothing had come of them. He was always getting dumped, it seemed, or sadly disillusioned. His mother had started fretting that he'd passed the point of no return and would wind up a seedy bachelor type. Now here was Lucy, slender and pretty and dressed in red, standing in the Bedloes' front hall with her back so straight, her purse held so firmly in both hands, that she seemed even smaller than she was. She seemed childlike, in fact, although Danny described her as a "woman" when he introduced her. "Mom, Dad, Ian, I'd like you to meet the woman who's changed my life." 
—From Saint Maybe, a novel by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991/Vintage reprint, 1996). 

Novels by Claire Keegan and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, short stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa and Yoon Choi, and a bonus book to read again

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During busy times like these, Furlong made most of the deliveries himself, leaving the yardmen to bag up the next orders and cut and split the loads of felled trees the farmers brought in. Through the mornings, the saws and shovels could be heard going hard at it, but when the Angelus bell rang, at noon, the men laid down their tools, washed the black off their hands, and went round to Kehoe's, where they were fed hot dinners with soup, and fish & chips on Fridays.
          'The empty sack cannot stand,' Mrs Kehoe liked to say, standing behind her new buffet counter, slicing up the meat and dishing out the veg and mash with her long, metal spoons. 
          Gladly, the men sat down to thaw out and eat their fill before having a smoke and facing back out into the cold again. 
—From Small Things Like These, a short novel by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2021). It was first published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Faber & Faber Limited.

I must leave this city today and come to you. My bags are packed and the empty rooms remind me that I should have left a week ago. Musa, my driver, has slept at the security guard’s post every night since last Friday, waiting for me to wake him up at dawn so we can set out on time. But my bags still sit in the living room, gathering dust.
          I have given most of what I acquired here—furniture, electronic devices, even house fittings—to the stylists who worked in my salon. So, every night for a week now, I’ve tossed about on this bed without a television to shorten my insomniac hours.
          There’s a house waiting for me in Ife, right outside the university where you and I first met. I imagine it now, a house not unlike this one, its many rooms designed to nurture a big family: man, wife and many children. I was supposed to leave a day after my hairdryers were taken down. The plan was to spend a week setting up my new salon and furnishing the house. I wanted my new life in place before seeing you again.
—From Stay with Me, a novel by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Vintage, 2018). The book was originally published in hardcover in Great Britain (Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh) and then in the United States (Alfred A. Knopf) in 2017. 

My mother learned to speak English watching these [soap operas], and soon she started practising what she learned. When my father didn't feel like eating, she would ask who he had been eating his meals with that he had no appetite? When a sock went missing from the dryer, she would ask where it went, and when he had no answer, she would accuse him of having an affair. 
—From How to Pronounce Knife, a short story collection by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 2020). This book won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, and it was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN America Open Book Award. The segment above is from the story "Edge of the World," which appears on pages 93-105 of the hardcover from Little, Brown in the United States. The collection is also available from McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom.

Once, before [the cancer] got so bad, she took her handbag and left. No one knew where she went. But later they found out that she had taken the 7 line to Main Street, Flushing. Even though I have never met James mother, I can picture her on that day, buying a sponge cake in the gift box and holding it by the ears. She paid the visit to Elder Huang, the optometrist, who is the matchmaker. Afterward, Mr. Huang contacted so-and-so, and so-and-so, until one day in September, Big Mother—which is my father's older brother's wife—came to our Front Gate and cried out: I'm here!

          Inside the house, we all ran around. My mother slapped every cushion on the guest sofa. She said, "Leave it, leave it," to our Miss, who was trying to pull off the dry flowers from the butterfly orchid on the glass table. She put Miss in the Back Room with Min-soo so that he would not be under Big Mother's eye-measure. She pushed me to the kitchen. Finally she opened the door as Big Mother came up the steps from the courtyard.
—From "First Language," a short story by Yoon Choi, from her collection Skinship (Knopf, 2021). This story appears on pages 44-79 of the Vintage Books trade paperback edition, 2022. This specific segment appears on page 46.  

Bonus book to read again: 

When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost. This did not mean my mother was dead. In those days, a ghost was anything we were forbidden to talk about. So I knew Popo wanted me to forget my mother on purpose, and this is how I came to remember nothing of her. The life that I knew began in the large house in Ningpo with the cold hallways and tall stairs. This was my uncle and auntie's family house, where I lived with Popo and my little brother. 
—From The Joy Luck Club, a novel by Amy Tan (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989/Penguin Books, 2016). The section above is from "Scar," which is on pages 33-41 of the Penguin paperback reissued with a preface by Amy Tan in 2019 for the thirtieth anniversary of the book's publication.   

The Spring 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short fiction by Marianna Vitale (translated from the Italian by Laura Venita Green), Nico Montoya, Anita Harag (translated from the Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess), Sohana Manzoor, and Kristian Radford; a lyric essay by Amy Ash; poetry in prose by Yves Bonnefoy (translated from the French by Hoyt Rogers); poetry by Ashish Kumar Singh, Susan Johnson, Laura Goldin, George HS Singer, and Liza Moore; and a cover image by Tunisian photographer Houcine Ncib. 

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.com. 

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

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The dark hallway smelled of fear, so I was afraid that Mrs Olfertsen would notice it, as if I'd brought the smell with me. My body and my movements became stiff and awkward as I stood listening to her fluttering voice explaining many things and, in between the explanations, running on like an empty spool that babbled about nothing in an uninterrupted stream – about the weather, about the boy, about how tall I was for my age. She asked whether I had an apron with me, and I took my mother's out of the emptied school bag. There was a hole near the seam because there was something or other wrong with everything that my mother was responsible for, and I was touched by the sight of it. My mother was far away and I wouldn't see her for eight hours. I was among strangers – I was someone whose physical strength they'd bought for a certain number of hours each day for a certain payment. They didn't care about the rest of me. When we went out to the kitchen, Toni, the little boy, came running up in his pajamas. 'Good morning, Mummy,' he said sweetly, leaning against his mother's legs and giving me a hostile look. The woman gently pulled herself free from him and said, 'This is Tove, say hello to the nice lady.' Reluctantly he put out his hand and when I took it, he said threateningly, 'You have to do everything I say or else I'll shoot you.' His mother laughed loudly and showed me a tray with cups and a teapot, and asked me to fix the tea and come into the living room with it.
—From Youth, chapter 1, by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally. This segment is on pages 103-104 of the American hardcover version of The Copenhagen Trilogy.  

The Copenhagen Trilogy is a compilation of three shorter books by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (Penguin Random House in Great Britain, 2020, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States, 2021). Childhood and Youth were first published in Copenhagen, Denmark, as Barndom and Ungdom (Gyldendal, 1967). Dependency was first published in Copenhagen as Gift (Gyldendal, 1971).

The New York Times included The Copenhagen Trilogy on its list of the ten best books of 2021, writing that "Ditlevsen's gorgeous memoirs, first published in Denmark in the 1960s and '70s and collected here in a single volume, detail her hardscrabble upbringing, career path and merciless addictions: a powerful account of the struggle to reconcile art and life. She joined the working ranks at 14, became a renowned poet by her early 20s, and found herself, after two failed marriages, wedded to a psychopathic doctor and hopelessly dependent on opioids by her 30s. Yet for all the dramatic twists of her life, these books together project a stunning clarity, humor and candidness, casting light not just on the world's harsh realities but on the inexplicable impulses of our secret selves." A full review of the book, by Megan O'Grady, appeared in the New York Times on January 26, 2021.

"Before Rehab," an astonishing excerpt from Dependency, written by Tove Ditlevsen and translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman (credited as Michael Goldman), appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of the Apple Valley Review. This excerpt, Chapter 5 of Dependency, is on pages 341-348 of the hardcover edition of The Copenhagen Trilogy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).

In an essay in The New Yorker, Hilton Als wrote that "Dependency strikes me as an inspired title for this volume, which is called Gift in Danish—a word that can mean 'marriage' or 'poison.' Ditlevsen has a dependency not only on Demerol but on the question of what it means to be a wife while also a lovesick daughter and an artist." The essay, "Tove Ditlevsen's Art of Estrangement," appeared in the Books section of The New Yorker in the issue for February 15 & 22, 2021.

Als also said, "Don’t think yourself odd if, after reading the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen's romantic, spiritually macabre, and ultimately devastating collection of memoirs . . . you spend hours, if not days, in a reverie of alienation." No comment about that. 

In my opinion, The Copenhagen Trilogy is even more phenomenal when paired with the unabridged audiobook from Macmillan Audio. I recently read the book again, in addition to listening to the audiobook, and the narration by Stine Wintlev brings the book to life in a new way. The audiobook is available directly from Macmillan Audio as well as from OverDrive, Audible, Spotify, SoundCloud, and elsewhere.

THE COPENHAGEN TRILOGY

Childhood, Youth, Dependency

By Tove Ditlevsen

Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Available online from Macmillan in hardcover, trade paperback, e-book, and digital audio 

Fiction by Graham Greene, Miriam Cohen, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Jonas Eika, and a collection of cityscapes by Paul Madonna

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Scobie took a Mende grammar from the bookcase: it was tucked away in the bottom shelf where its old untidy cover was least conspicuous. In the upper shelves were the flimsy rows of Louise's authors—not-quite-so-young modern poets and the novels of Virginia Woolf. He couldn't concentrate: it was too hot and his wife's absence was like a garrulous companion in the room reminding him of his responsibility. A fork fell on the floor and he watched Ali surreptitiously wipe it on his sleeve, watched him with affection: they had been together fifteen years—a year longer than his marriage—a long time to keep a servant. He had been "small boy" first, then assistant steward in the days when one kept four servants, now he was plain steward. After each leave Ali would be on the landing-stage waiting to organize his luggage with three or four ragged carriers. In the intervals of leave many people tried to steal Ali's services, but he had never yet failed to be waiting—except once when he had been in prison. There was no disgrace about prison; it was an obstacle that no one could avoid for ever.
—From The Heart of the Matter, a novel by Graham Greene (William Heinemann in London/The Viking Press in the United States, 1948). I was listening to an unabridged audiobook version narrated by Joseph Porter (Blackstone Publishing, 2011). Please note: this book contains some racist language that will be considered offensive now. The Heart of the Matter is set in Sierra Leone during World War II and was first published in 1948. 

Yael's parents ask if she has any questions, and she does, but she suspects they aren't the right ones. She wants to know if she will have two toothbrushes now, or if she will bring the same one back and forth, its bristles wrapped in shredding tissue to keep from getting germy. Also, she is curious about when a divorce starts: if it happens all at once, or in stages, the way people are engaged for a while before they are married. She wants to ask if later on that night they will have dinner together, or if the divorce has made that, today, impossible.
—From "Bad Words," a short story by Miriam Cohen, from her collection Adults and Other Children (Ig Publishing, 2020). This story appears on pages 31-45.  

Clover was back in the room, the baby flung over one shoulder. She was wearing an old Cramps T-shirt she liked to sleep in and nothing else. I might have found this sexy to one degree or another but for the fact that I wasn't at my best in the morning and I'd seen her naked save for one rock-and-roll memento T-shirt for something like a thousand consecutive mornings now. "It's six-fifteen," she said. I said nothing. My eyes eased shut. I heard her at the closet, and in the dream that crashed down on me in that instant she metamorphosed from a rippling human female with a baby slung over her shoulder to a great shining bird springing from the brink of a precipice and sailing on great shining wings into the void. I woke to the baby. On the bed. Beside me. "You change her," my wife said. "You feed her. I'm late as it is."
—From "The Lie," a short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle, The New Yorker (April 14, 2008). Stephen Colbert read this story for Selected Shorts, and it is included in Selected Shorts: Even More Laughs. The compilation, which is available in various locations such as Audible and OverDrive, also includes "The Spray" by Jonathan Lethem, "The Swim Team" by Miranda July, and other stories.

I arrived in Copenhagen sweaty and halfway out of myself after an extremely fictional flight. Frankly, I would use that word for any air travel, but on this trip I had, shortly after takeoff, fallen into a light feverish daze in which I relived a series of flights I had taken earlier in my life.
—From "Alvin," a short story by Jonas Eika, translated from the Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg, The New Yorker (April 19, 2021), pp. 52-59. 

"This new guy I'm dating is driving me crazy. His reply to everything is, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous for that.'"
          "Uh. I know what you mean. I dated a guy who did the same thing. And it would always be to the most ridiculous stuff, like, you'd say, 'I hate when people leave the cap off the toothpaste.' And he'd say, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous for that.'"
          "Ha! That's Jeffrey to a T! As if anyone could be famous for something so stupid. I mean, who's he famous to anyway?"
          "Wait a minute—Jeffrey? He wouldn't happen to work at a trattoria on Stockton Street?"
          "Yeah, how did you—"
          "Wow."
          "No kidding. I guess he is famous for something."
—From Everything Is Its Own Reward: An All Over Coffee Collection, a large collection of meticulous pen and ink cityscapes and thoughts from the weekly San Francisco Chronicle series "All Over Coffee" by Paul Madonna (City Lights Books, 2011). This is his second collection of work from the newspaper. My favorite panels from this book were on pages 75, 82, 103, and 207. The excerpt quoted here is from page 75.

Fiction by Ben Okri, Claire Keegan, Sayaka Murata, and Jai Chakrabarti, and a graphic novel by Yeon-sik Hong

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The first time he realized that there was something not quite right about him was when a woman crossed the street as she saw him coming. He thought it was a coincidence. Then it happened again. 
          He began to watch those around him. One day, on the Underground, a woman three empty seats away moved her handbag to her other side when she saw him. He wasn’t sure why.
          After the fourth or fifth time something like that happened, he looked at himself in the mirror. He thought he was normal, like everyone else. But when he looked at himself through the eyes of those who clutched their handbags when they saw him he understood that his face was not as normal as he’d thought.
—From "A Wrinkle in the Realm," a short story by Ben Okri, The New Yorker (February 8, 2021), pp. 52-54. Okri is the author of several books including Prayer for the Living, a collection of stories (Akashic Books, 2021). My favorites from that book were all clumped together in the middle: "The Canopy" (pp. 75-77), "In the Ghetto" (78-85), and "Mysteries" (89-99). "Mysteries" was first published in the Sunday Times Magazine in 2009. 

Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford towards the coast where my mother's people came from. It is a hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh where my father lost our red Shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew where the man who won the heifer sold her shortly afterwards. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window.
—From Foster, a short novel by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2022). This book was first published in the United Kingdom in 2010 by Faber & Faber Limited. 

After classes ended, I ran to the mountain behind our school. There was a small hut on the mountain where Yuki and I kept our secret pet. In my bag I had three bread rolls left over from lunch.
—From Life Ceremony, a collection of short stories by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2022). This excerpt is from "Poochie" (pp. 63-68). My favorite stories from this collection were "A Summer Night's Kiss" and "Two's Family" (pp. 45-58), "The Time of the Large Star" (59-62), and "Poochie" (63-68).

She changes out of her jeans and caftan and into a starched white sari, applies makeup that accentuates the wrinkles around her eyes, then streaks her temples with washout gray and snaps on eyelash extensions. She takes another moment to fix her hair into a bun with two gilded bobby pins. The final touch is a red bindi placed in the absolute center of her forehead. She believes her clients are often struck by the bindi's perfect symmetry, the high cheekbones it calls into focus. It's simple enough to transform into an elderly woman, so simple in fact that she has begun to wonder, at forty-two, whether she's actually taken on the accoutrements of old age decades before her time.
—From "A Mother's Work," a short story by Jai Chakrabarti, One Story, Issue 294 (October 20, 2022).

I have all this clean air and can collect wild plants and hunt for fish. As long as I have the desire to work on a graphic novel, what's the problem? This is no joke . . . These days, I'm worried about just buying rice . . . I have a household that I'm responsible for. I can't just run away from life to work on a graphic novel. If I just had enough money to live a simple life . . .
—From Uncomfortably Happily, a graphic novel by Yeon-sik Hong, translated from the Korean by Hellen Jo (Drawn & Quarterly, 2017). The excerpt above is from page 84. This book was originally published in Korea as Bul-pyeon-ha-go haeng-bo-ka-ge (2012).