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We arrive from the Big Town. We've been traveling all night. Mother's eyes are red. She's carrying a big cardboard box, and the two of us are each carrying a small suitcase containing our clothes, plus Father's big dictionary, which we pass back and forth when our arms get tired.
—From The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie, a set of three novels by Ágota Kristóf, a Hungarian writer who moved to Switzerland when she was twenty-one. The novels are sometimes referred to collectively as The Notebook Trilogy (Grove Press, 1997). They were translated from the French by, respectively, Alan Sheridan, David Watson, and Marc Romano, and are collected here in one long volume. The books were originally published individually in French as Le grand cahier, La preuve, and Le troisième mensonge (Éditions du Seuil, 1986, 1988, 1991).
Please note: this set of three novels contains a fair amount of violence and themes that may not be for everyone.
The white cat said that she could not possibly consider allowing him to leave for at least another day. And so he spent the evening in the company of cats, playing board games and drinking games, while his dogs lay panting and happy on the flagstones beside the hearth.
—From White Cat, Black Dog, a collection of seven stories by Kelly Link (Random House, 2023). Each story is preceded by a black and white illustration by Shaun Tan. My favorite stories were the bookends of the collection, "The White Cat's Divorce" and "Skinder's Veil." This excerpt, from "The White Cat's Divorce," appears on page 15 of the paperback. I recommend this book in print and as an audiobook; both versions were excellent. The stories were narrated by, in order, Rebecca Lowman, Dan Stevens, Dominic Hoffman, Kristen Sieh, Ish Klein, Tanya Cubric, and Patton Oswalt (Books on Tape, 2023).
Frank keeps his eyes moving in their steady rotation, fixing his face in an empty and unsuggestive smile. Whenever he sees the student now he feels a kind of mental tilt, a shiver of precarity, and he has to shake it off like a dream.
—From "Nothing That Counts," a short story by Devon Halliday, One Story, Issue 317 (September 19, 2024)
My dear friend Charlotte died one Wednesday in May 2018. She was 34 years old. . . . A humble comic could never do justice to who she was. It's not really about suicide or mental health, either.
—From But You Have Friends, a graphic memoir by Emilia McKenzie (Top Shelf Productions, 2023).
June 1969: Swarthmore Graduation. The night before, someone had taken white paint and painted "Commence What?" on the front of the stage. The maintenance crew had dutifully covered it over with red, white, and blue bunting, but we all knew it was there.
—From The Eden Express, a memoir by Mark Vonnegut (Praeger Publishing, 1975). This book has been reissued in print at least once or twice since then, but I was listening to the audiobook, which was narrated by Pete Cross (Dreamscape Media, 2017).