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. 

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.