A set of three novels by Ágota Kristóf, a collection of reinvented fairy tales by Kelly Link, a short story by Devon Halliday, and memoirs by Emilia McKenzie and Mark Vonnegut

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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). 

Short stories by Lily King, Akhil Sharma, and Kang Young-sook; a novel by Yun Ko-eun; and a poem by Cal O'Reilly

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Socially we balanced each other out. He was the guy who came into the room and everyone was relieved. I made people deeply uneasy, myself most of all. If we hadn't shared a room I would have been one of those guys on our hall that got a nod from him in the stairwell, maybe a bit of banter at the sink shaving, but no 2 a.m. arguments about transubstantiation or Bret Easton Ellis. 
—From Five Tuesdays in Winter, a collection of short stories by Lily King (Grove Press, 2021). This segment is from "Hotel Seattle" (pp. 150-168 in the hardcover). Lily King's story "When in the Dordogne" is one of my favorite stories that I've ever read in One Story. Based on that, I bought this collection when it was first released (back in 2021, apparently!) and it has been languishing in my TBR pile ever since. Recently, I read the book and listened to the audiobook, which has various narrators and is excellent (Blackstone Publishing). If you're looking for stories that could be described as quietly devastating, I'd recommend a few from the middle of the collection: "North Sea," "Hotel Seattle," and "Waiting for Charlie." 

Yona went down to Jinhae on Friday evening. Jungle—the travel company where she worked as a programming coordinator—didn't currently offer any travel packages to visit the post-tsunami rubble, but it would soon. 
—From The Disaster Tourist, a novel by Yun Ko-eun, translated from the Korean by Lizzie Buehler (Counterpoint, 2020). The English translation was first published in Great Britain by Serpent's Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd. The book was first published in Korean by Minumsa (2013). I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Natalie Naudus (also Blackstone Publishing). Strangely, I felt like most of the marketing materials were describing a completely different book. To me, it was more about selfishness and greed (both corporate and personal) within the context of disaster tourism and, I guess, tourism more generally. 

Mrs. Graeber walked around the class checking on our progress. By this time, Ritu had pinned the organs to the wax of the workbench, and they looked the way they appeared in the drawings: the heart, the kidneys, the stomach. Mrs. Graeber asked Ritu who had done what. Ritu and I were both standing. I said that I had done the measurements. Ritu looked down and didn't speak.
—From "Ritu," a piece of flash fiction by Akhil Sharma, The New Yorker (online August 28, 2025). 

Right then two children sprung out from the east entrance of the apartment. Both were wearing long padded jackets and masks decorated with animal faces. Holding hands, they walked across the field and stepped onto the sidewalk. They glanced at us as they walked past. . . . I raised my hand in an awkward wave. Ignoring me, they quickly walked along the narrow road, still holding hands. Each time a truck hurtled past them, I couldn't help holding my breath. 
—From At Night He Lifts Weights, a collection of short stories by Kang Young-sook, translated from the Korean by Janet Hong (Transit Books, 2023). Originally published in Korea by Changbi Publishers, Inc. (2011). This segment is from "From Mullae," the first story in the collection. 

I didn't think about the texture of your hair 
or your stubble on my cheek
—From "I went to the library and I didn't think about" by Cal O'Reilly, from Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, selected by Leeanne Quinn (Dedalus Press, 2025).

Novels by Bruna Dantas Lobato and Katie Kitamura, a story collection by Jana Egle, and poetry by Daniel Halpern and Małgorzata Lebda

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Besides plain white bedsheets and a pillow, the only thing I bought for the room was a desk lamp: dark blue, with an adjustable neck, a bit of color standing out against all the shades of beige. When my mom called me on Skype from our apartment on the outskirts of Natal, that's what she saw.
—From Blue Light Hours, a novel by Bruna Dantas Lobato (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic, 2024). 

I saw a flicker of surprise cross [the host's] features as a I pointed [at the young man seated at the back of the restaurant]. He looked quickly from my face to my coat to my jewelry. It was my age, above all. That was the thing that confounded him. He gave a tight smile and asked me to please follow him.
—From Audition, a novel by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead Books, 2025). I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama, and I would also recommend it in that format. 

Should we take a trip?  
—"Invitation," a poem by Daniel Halpern, The New Yorker (March 11, 2024, pp. 44-45).   

Dita is standing at the window in her home, an opened letter in her hands, waiting for Niks to drive up with their two smallest children. That morning they'd gone to Niks's mother's places to get some potatoes—they didn't have any of their own left.
—From Birthday, a short story collection by Jana Egle, translated from the Latvian by Uldis Balodis (Open Letter, 2025). The book was originally published as Dzimšanas diena (Latvijas Mediji, 2020). This segment is from the story "The Debt," which appears on pages 25-44 of the trade paperback. Please note: this book contains at least two stories that may not be suitable for everyone. 

Night here in the valley spreads out its vigil,
night of one place following after another.
—From "Faithful Animal," a poem by Małgorzata Lebda, translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal. Six of Małgorzata Lebda's poems from her book Mer de Glace were translated into English and included, along with a personal essay, in the eleventh installment of the "Literature and Democracy" series from New England Review.

Short stories by Marianne Villanueva, and novels by Amy Tan, Avdotya Panaeva, Sayaka Murata, and Domenico Starnone

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She's leaning forward, as if to kiss him. There's a mark on his cheek; perhaps she's done it already. They are both smiling. 
          These were my parents in Manila, circa 1956. They were happy; they had always been happy. The happiness of their marriage was like a reproach. 
—From Mayor of the Roses, a collection of short stories by Marianne Villanueva (Miami University Press, 2005). This segment is the opening of "Picture" (pp. 87-92).

[Art's daughters] wore their long chestnut hair alike, pulled into ponytails high on their heads so that they cascaded like fountain spray. All their friends wore their hair in an identical style, Ruth had noticed. When she was their age, she had wanted to grow her hair long the way the other girls did, but her mother made her cut it short. "Long hair look like suicide maiden," LuLing had said. And Ruth knew she was referring to the nursemaid who had killed herself when her mother was a girl. Ruth had had nightmares about that, the ghost with long hair, dripping blood, crying for revenge.  
—From The Bonesetter's Daughter, a novel by Amy Tan (Ballantine, 2001). This is from page 21 of the trade paperback.

In a room lit by a dim candle, they washed the dead body of my six-month-old sister. . . . The room was silent; neither my father nor my mother cried. Only the wet nurse cried—about the gilded cap and fur coat that she had lost due to my sister’s premature death. If the baby had waited five or six months longer to die, the nurse's work would have been through, and the promised reward would not have slipped through her fingers.
—From The Talnikov Family, a novel by Avdotya Panaeva, translated from the Russian by Fiona Bell (Columbia University Press, 2024). 

In the sex education class the next day, though, I was taught something completely different [from what my mother had explained to me]. We were made to watch endless videos about the mechanism of artificial insemination and the mystery of bringing a new life into the world.
—From Vanishing World, a novel by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2025).

Between the ages of eight and nine, I set out to find the pit of the dead. At school, in Italian class, I had recently learned about the legend of Orpheus and how he travelled to the underworld to bring back his girlfriend, Eurydice, who, unhappily, had wound up there after getting bitten by a snake. My plan was to do the same for a girl who was not my girlfriend but who might be if I managed to lead her back above ground from below . . . 
—From The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Europa Editions, 2024). 

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.   

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).

Fiction by Olga Zilberbourg, Weike Wang, Jeanette Winterson, Camille Bordas, and Clare Sestanovich

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My mother was born in Leningrad, after the Great Patriotic War. When she was seven years old, she became addicted to shooting practice. The range was housed in the basement of the five-story residential building where she lived. The basement, a remodeled air-raid shelter, was a long, low-ceilinged room, filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer. My mother frequented the place on her way home from first grade.
—From Like Water and Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Olga Zilberbourg (WTAW Press, 2019). This section is from "My Mother at the Shooting Range," pp. 36-39, and was first published in J Journal: New Writing on Justice (3.1, Spring 2010). 

In Shanghai, they met up with his wife's cousin, who lived alone and worked in a pie shop. Here the prepaid tour ended and they said goodbye to Karl and the others. His wife had booked a room at the Langham. There were no light switches, just a control pad by the bed. The toilet lid lifted each time he passed. In Shanghai, they ate more. Hot pot, grilled fish, barbecue, fried noodles, soup noodles, soup dumplings, regular dumplings, an upscale KFC.
—From "The Trip," a short story by Weike Wang, The New Yorker (November 18, 2019), pp. 62-67.

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn’t matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that.
        She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.
        She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.

                Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms)
                                             Next Door
                                             Sex (in its many forms)
                                             Slugs
                 Friends were:  God
                                             Our dog
                                             Auntie Madge
                                             The Novels of Charlotte Brontë
                                             Slug pellets

and me, at first. I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World. She had a mysterious attitude towards the begetting of children; it wasn’t that she couldn't do it, more that she didn't want to do it. She was very bitter about the Virgin Mary getting there first. So she did the next best thing and arranged for a foundling. That was me.
—From Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a novel by Jeanette Winterson (Grove Press, 1985).

All I said was that she must like beige a lot. I was trying to put my finger on why I disliked her so much. Audrey. My brother’s new girlfriend. I thought maybe it was the different shades of beige she’d been wearing all week.
        “You must really like beige,” I said, and she said: “What do you mean?”
        “Your pants,” I said, “your shirts—all beige. Or . . . oatmeal, maybe.” “Oatmeal” sounded less aggressive. I’d been told I was a little mean at times, in my choice of words.
        “My pants are green,” Audrey said.
        “Jeanne is right,” my brother said, and it was the first time he’d agreed with me all year. “Your pants aren’t green, babe.”
        Just like that, Audrey found out that she was color-blind.
—From "Only Orange," a short story by Camille Bordas, The New Yorker (December 23, 2019), pp. 76-83.

The summer Val turned twenty-five, her sort-of stepbrother, Zeke, came to live with her in New York. He was nineteen, and when he appeared at her front door, two pairs of shoes dangling from her backpack, drinking greedily from a can of Coke, she was meeting him for the first time. Decades ago, Zeke's mother had been married to Val's father.
—From Objects of Desire, a collection of stories by Clare Sestanovich (Knopf, 2021). This section is from "Wants and Needs," pp. 139-156.

A documentary film by Loira Limbal, fiction by Natsuko Imamura, Laura Imai Messina, and Banana Yoshimoto, and poetry by Sharon Olds

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Through the Night is a cinema verité portrait of three working New York mothers whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center: a mother working the overnight shift as an essential worker at a hospital; another holding down three jobs to support her family; and a woman who for over two decades has cared for the children of parents with nowhere else to turn.
—From promotional materials for Through the Night, a documentary film by Loira Limbal. It aired locally on PBS on the series POV. The website for the documentary contains current links if you would like to rent or buy the film. 

On certain days, I've seen the Woman in the Purple Skirt purchase her cream bun from the bakery, walk through the shopping district, and head straight for the park. The time is just past three in the afternoon. The evergreen oaks that border the south side of the park provide shade for the Exclusively Reserved Seat. The Woman in the Purple Skirt sits down in the middle of the bench and proceeds to eat her cream bun, holding one hand cupped underneath it, in case any of the custard filling spills onto her lap.
—From The Woman in the Purple Skirt, a novel by Natsuko Imamura, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North (Penguin Books, 2021). Originally published in Japanese as Murasaki no sukato no onna (Tokyo, Japan: Asahi Shimbun Publications, Inc., 2019).

"So," the voice began, between regular inhalations on a cigarette, "there's this phone booth in a garden, on a hill in the middle of nowhere. The phone isn't connected to anything, but your voice is carried away with the wind. I'll say, Hi, Yoko, how are you? And I feel myself becoming the person I was before, my wife listening to me from the kitchen, busy preparing breakfast or dinner, me grumbling that the coffee's burned my tongue. 
        "Yesterday evening I was reading my grandson the story of Peter Pan, the little flying boy who loses his shadow and the girl who sews it back onto the soles of his feet. And, you know, I think that's what we're doing when we go up that hill to Suzuki-san's garden: we're trying to get our shadows back."
—From The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World, a novel by Laura Imai Messina, translated from the Italian by Lucy Rand (The Overlook Press, an imprint of Abrams, 2021). This segment is from pages 16-17 in hardcover.  

Wherever he went, Hitoshi always had a little bell with him, attached to the case he kept his bus pass in. Even though it was just a trinket, something I gave him before we were in love, it was destined to remain at his side until the last.
—From "Moonlight Shadow," a short story published along with the short novel Kitchen, both by Banana Yoshimoto, translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus (Grove Press, 2006). 

She was so small I would scan the crib a half-second
to find her, face-down in a corner, limp
as something gently flung down, or fallen . . .
—From "Her First Week," a poem by Sharon Olds, from her collection The Wellspring (Knopf, 1996, p. 44). 

Novels by Wioletta Greg and Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, and three poems from The Southern Review

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A christening shawl decorated with periwinkle and yellowed asparagus fern hung in the window of our stone house for nearly two years.  It tempted me with a little rose tucked in its folds, and I would have used it as a blanket for my dolls, but my mother wouldn't let me go near it.
        "Don't touch the shawl, Loletka.  It's a memento.  We'll take it down when your dad comes back," she'd say.  And when her friend who lived nearby would pop in "for a moment"—meaning two hours—she would repeat the story of how, a month after my father was arrested for deserting from the army and two weeks before her baby was due, she received a summons to start a work placement at Cem-Build.  Together with a dozen other women, she had to make paving slabs as part of the new five-year plan, so that the district government could create new squares in front of office buildings, schools and health centres within the allotted time.  In the end, Mum couldn't take working outside in the freezing weather.  She hid behind a cement mixer, and when her waters broke into a bucket full of lime they drove her to the maternity ward.
        She brought me home in February.  Still bleeding after childbirth, she lay down on the bed, unwrapped my blanket, which reeked of mucus and urine, rubbed the stump of my umbilical cord with gentian violet, tied a red ribbon around my wrist to ward off evil spells and fell asleep for a few hours.  It was the sort of sleep during which a person decides whether to depart or to turn back.
--From Swallowing Mercury, a novel by Wioletta Grzegorzewska (writing as Wioletta Greg), translated from the Polish by Eliza Marciniak (Transit Books, 2017).  Originally published as Guguły, which means "unripe fruit" according to the translator's note at the end of the book (Wydawnictwo Czarne: Wołowcu, Poland, 2014).

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.  
--From "Gift," a poem written and translated from Polish to English by Czeslaw Milosz, reprinted in "Regarding Happiness," an essay by Charles Baxter, The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 248.

My old man rings me on my cell.  The garbage can is beside the road
and needs to be rolled back into the carport.  
--From "My Father's Garbage Can," a poem by David Bottoms, The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 220.

Water opens without end
At the bow of the ship
--From "Voyage," a poem by Samuel Menashe, reprinted in "No Small Feat" by Robin Ekiss, a review of Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems (edited by Christopher Ricks), The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 365.

On my way down Skothúsvegur I reflect on how one should go about borrowing a hunting rifle from a neighbour.  Does one borrow a weapon the same way one borrows a hose extension?  What animals are hunted at the beginning of May?  One can't shoot the messenger of spring, the golden plover, who has just returned to the island, or a duck hatching from an egg.  Could I say that I want to shoot a great black-backed gull that keeps me awake in the attic apartment of a residential block in the city centre?  Wouldn't Svanur find it suspicious if I were to suddenly turn into a spokesman for ducklings' rights?  Besides, Svanur knows that I'm no hunter.  
--From Hotel Silence, a novel by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic, 2018).  Published by arrangement with Éditions Zulma, Paris, France.  Originally published as Ör (Scars) (Benedikt Bókaútgáfa: Reykjavík, Iceland, 2016).

Fiction and poetry by Domenico Starnone, Sayaka Murata, Mary White, and more

~
One evening Betta called, crankier than usual, wanting to know if I felt up to minding her son while she and her husband took part in a mathematics conference in Cagliari.  I'd been living in Milan for a couple of decades, and the thought of decamping to Naples, to the old house I'd inherited from my parents, and where my daughter had been living since prior to getting married, didn't thrill me.  I was over seventy and, having been a widower for some time, had lost the habit of living with others.  I only felt comfortable in my own bed and in my own bathroom.  Furthermore, I'd undergone, a few weeks earlier, a small surgical procedure which, even in the clinic, seemed to have done more harm than good.  Though the doctors poked their faces day and night into my room, to tell me that everything had gone fine, my hemoglobin was low, my ferritin was poor, and one afternoon, I saw small heads, plaster-white, stretching toward me from the opposite wall.
--From Trick, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri (Europa Editions, 2018). Originally published in Italian as Scherzetto (Einaudi: Torino, Italy, 2016).

The morning period is passing normally in the brightly lit box of the convenience store, I feel.  Visible outside the windows, polished free of fingerprints, are the figures of people rushing by.  It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move.  I am one of those cogs, going round and round.  I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.
--From Convenience Store Woman, a novel by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2018).  Originally published in Japanese as Konbini ningen (Tokyo, Japan: Bungeishunjū Ltd., 2016). 

When my fiancé left for the war 
Which is still going on 
I prepared increasingly elaborate foods
--From "Expectation Management," a poem by Mary White, Communion Arts Journal (June 2019).

Like, he's definitely cheating.  He's not even trying to hide it anymore.  He's such a piece of shit.  Take a left here.  And the worst part is she's not going to say anything either.  I mean, she's basically just waiting for him to leave her.  It's honestly stressful just being in the same room as them.
--From Bottled, a graphic novel by Chris Gooch (Top Shelf Productions, 2017). 

I didn't belong there.  I wandered through the succession of rooms, with a glass of overly acidic champagne in my hand.  I looked at the other guests.  Their self-confidence, the way they held their heads.  Their facial expressions.  They formed familiar little clusters, burst out laughing, glanced over at rival groups, occasionally glanced at the canvases, gushed noisily, turned away, murmured a spicy anecdote or scathing commentary into the ear of an acolyte, demolishing the opus they had just praised in the blink of an eye.  
--From Exposed, a novel by Jean-Philippe Blondel, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (New Vessel Press, 2019).  Originally published in French as La mise à nu (Libella: Paris, France, 2018).

Living alone in his dead uncle's cottage, and with the burden lately of wandering thoughts in the night, Seamus Ferris had fallen hard for a Polish girl who worked at a café down in Carrick.  He had himself almost convinced that the situation had the dimensions of a love affair, though in fact he'd exchanged no more than a few dozen words with her, whenever she named the price for his flat white and scone, and he shyly paid it, offering a line or two himself on the busyness of the town or the fineness of the weather.
--From "The Coast of Leitrim," a short story by Kevin Barry, The New Yorker (October 15, 2018), pp. 70-75.

Poems by Danusha Laméris, David Lehman, Ada Limón, and Mary Oliver

~
You're beautiful, sister, eat more fruit,
said the attendant every time my mother 
pulled into the 76 off Ashby Avenue.
--From "Service Station," a poem by Danusha Laméris, Tin House (March 21, 2018), from Issue 75.

It's June 15, 2017, a Thursday,
fortieth anniversary of the infamous day
the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati

--From "It Could Happen to You," a poem by David Lehman, The New Yorker (December 4, 2017), p. 54.

The road wasn't as hazardous then, 
when I'd walk to the steel guardrail, 
lean my bendy girl body over, and stare 
at the cold creek water.
--From "Overpass," a poem by Ada Limón, The New Yorker (December 4, 2017), p. 27.

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around. 

--From "Dogfish," a poem by Mary Oliver, from her collection Dream Work (Grove/Atlantic, 1986).