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. 

Novels by Miranda July and Kim Thúy, short stories by Kathy Fish and Alexandra Chang, and essays by David Sedaris

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If you are suffering from insomnia, and you are listening to Miranda July narrate the audiobook version of her recent novel, All Fours, then you, too, may have the experience of being awake at two or three o'clock in the morning listening to her read the following passage about the narrator preparing for a two-and-a-half-week road trip: 

The Benadryl was for sleep, not allergies. I'd been having this thing where I woke up every night at two a.m. It wasn't a big deal unless I didn't have Benadryl and then it was a harrowing fugue state ending only when the sun rose on a fragile, weeping shell of a person, unable to work or think, much less drive safely. That's why I needed extra. 
—From All Fours, a novel by Miranda July (Riverhead Books, 2024). The segment above is from page 25 of the print hardcover. This book is about intimacy and desire, among other things, and has a lot of explicit scenes. 

I have failed the time unit. My father takes down the clock and sets it on the table. He moves the hands. See? I place my pinky against the second hand and wind it counterclockwise.
          Maybe this is a story about a clock with no hands.
—From "Alligator," a piece of flash fiction by Kathy Fish, Northwest Review (2023).

The story of the little girl who was swallowed up by the sea after she'd lost her footing while walking along the edge spread through the foul-smelling belly of the boat like an anaesthetic or laughing gas, transforming the single bulb into a polar star and the biscuits soaked in motor oil into butter cookies.
—From Ru, a short novel by Kim Thúy, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman (Bloomsbury USA, 2012). This book was originally published in French in Canada (Éditions Libre Expression, Montreal, 2009). The English translation was originally published simultaneously in Canada (Random House Canada, Toronto, 2012) and in the United Kingdom (The Clerkenwell Press, a division of Profile Books Limited, London, 2012). A note at the beginning of the book mentions that "in French, ru means a small stream and, figuratively, a flow" (of tears, blood, money). "In Vietnamese, ru means a lullaby, to lull." Based on Kim Thúy's real-life experiences before and after leaving Vietnam, this novel is composed of short, often poetic vignettes.  

Now I was very much in my thirties, jobless, with nothing tying me to the place where I lived besides the one-bedroom apartment I rented that still had ten months on the lease. I wasn't hurting for money yet, but I was bored and growing increasingly anxious. I suspected I should be doing more with my time than eating weed gummies and lying in bed binge-watching reality dating shows with heinous and hilarious names like Simp Island and From Stalker to Lover. The shows made me certain I would die alone. It wasn't necessarily the most frightening thought, since I liked being alone, but it was the first time in my life that I had the time to meditate on my mortality, on how everything I had spent the last seven years of my life doing—focusing on my career, developing my independence, saving my money for some future better life—had been, ultimately, meaningless . . . 
—From Tomb Sweeping, a collection of short stories by Alexandra Chang (Ecco, 2023). This segment is from the first story, "Unknown by Unknown" (pp. 1-23 in the paperback). My favorite stories from the collection were two that appeared back to back and felt somewhat related: "A Visit" (pp. 106-116) and "Flies" (pp. 117-135), the latter of which was first published in Harvard Review (Issue 58).   

Bonus book to read again: 

I was on the front porch, drowning a mouse in a bucket, when this van pulled up, which was strange. On an average day, a total of fifteen cars might pass the house, but no one ever stops, not unless they live here. And this was late, three o'clock in the morning. 
—From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2004). This segment is from "Nuit of the Living Dead," which appears on pages 246-257 of the original hardcover and appeared in The New Yorker (February 16, 2004), pp. 74-78, with the title "The Living Dead." 

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.   

Work by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Dan Chiasson, Ruth Reichl, Roz Chast, and more

Once there was a patient in the hospital who was still feeling rather poorly, especially at night.  Part of the problem was a conversation he kept hearing through the wall, day and night.  
--From Through the Wall, a tiny book containing five stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Anna Summers and Keith Gessen (Penguin, 2011).  Three of the stories published in this Mini Modern Classic were first published in English in book form in There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Penguin, 2009).  The remaining two stories were published for the first time in English in this collection.  Through the Wall might be a little difficult to find in the U.S.; I was lucky enough to find a used copy at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon. 

Out late and the night is a ruin, my voice says
the night is a ruin, my voice doesn’t say a thing,
my poem says my voice doesn’t say a thing, . . . 

--From "Tulip Tree," a poem by Dan Chiasson.  Knopf included it in their Poem-a-Day mailing for National Poetry Month on April 12, 2019.  "Tulip Tree" was published in Natural History, a collection of poetry by Dan Chiasson (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).

Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling.  You could tell instantly just by opening the door.  One day in 1960 I found a whole suckling pig staring at me.  I jumped back and slammed the door, hard.  

--From Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, a memoir by Ruth Reichl (Broadway Books/Random House, 1998). 

My mother's name was Miriam, but most people called her Mim. . . .  I've got Mim Tales by the dozen, and I've used them for years to entertain my friends.  As a writer I've always known how lucky I was to have so much material, and my first book opened with Mom accidentally poisoning a couple of dozen people at a party.  After the book was published people kept asking, "Did she really do those things?"

--From For You Mom, Finally (previously published in hardcover as Not Becoming My Mother), a memoir by Ruth Reichl (Penguin, 2010).

A Note on the Author [Me, age 9, lying in bed reading The Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases] 

--From Theories of Everything, an enormous collection of cartoons by Roz Chast from 1978 to 2006 (Bloomsbury, 2006).  

A quick side note: 

I don't typically mention book tours because they have a relatively short life span, but Roz Chast is currently on tour with Patricia Marx for their book Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? A Mother's Suggestions (Celadon Books, 2019).  Attend an event if you have the opportunity; they are good friends and very entertaining.  (I'd also recommend seeing Ruth Reichl if you can; she is on tour to promote Save Me the Plums.)     

Our friend came over the other night.  He and his terrible girlfriend had finally broken up.  This was his third breakup with that particular girlfriend, but he insisted it was going to be the one to stick.  He paced around our kitchen, working his way through the ten thousand petty humiliations and torments of their six-month relationship, while we cooed and fretted and bent our faces into sympathetic shapes in his direction.  When he went to the bathroom to collect himself, we collapsed against each other, rolling our eyes and pretending to strangle ourselves and shoot ourselves in the head.  
--From You Know You Want This: "Cat Person" and Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Kristen Roupenian (Scout Press, 2019).  This selection is from "Bad Boy," which first appeared in Body Parts Magazine.   

Graphic memoirs by Dominique Goblet, Roz Chast, and Katie Green

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My father doesn't drink anymore.  Not one more drop, supposedly.  I haven't seen him in four years.  My daughter will be four in July . . .  Next month, that is.  
--From Pretending Is Lying, a graphic memoir by Belgian artist Dominique Goblet, translated from the French by Sophie Yanow in collaboration with the author (New York Review Comics, 2017).  Of the three books, this one is the most unusual, both visually and stylistically.

We drove down Ocean Parkway, the benches, the six-story apartment houses . . . we were in my old neighborhood, then on my old block, and finally, there was the old building where I grew up and where my parents were still living.  The cab pulled up.  I got out and entered the building, filled with dread, guilt, and a weird kind of claustrophobia.    
--From Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, a graphic memoir by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast (Bloomsbury, 2014).  The subject matter is grim--the aging and death of her parents--but Chast's sensitivity and humor make the book relatable and often funny. 

Dear Reader, 
You are holding the book I wish had been there for me. 
It exists because I wanted nobody else to feel as lost, confused and alone as I felt.  I wanted to be honest about how hard recovery is, and how long it takes, at the same time proving that it is possible.
--From Lighter Than My Shadow, a graphic memoir about anorexia and abuse by English artist Katie Green (first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape/Vintage, 2013; first published in the United States by Roar/Lion Forge, 2017).  The 500-page memoir is light on text, letting Green's meticulous illustrations bring the book to life.