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). 

Fiction by Alina Bronsky, Jean Thompson, and Ann Patchett, and two poems about fire

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I'm awoken in the night again by Marja's rooster, Konstantin.  He's like an ersatz husband for Marja.  She raised him, and she pampered and spoiled him even as a chick; now he's full-grown and good for nothing.  Struts around the yard imperiously and leers at me.  His internal clock is messed up, always has been, though I don't think it has anything to do with the radiation.  You can't blame the radiation for every stupid thing in the world.  
--From Baba Dunja's Last Love, a novel by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2016).  Originally published as Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Köln, Germany, 2015).

My father came home from the war to a household of girls and women.  There was me, my mother, and my sister Carol, born while he was away.  This was 1967, which was early to be coming back from Vietnam.  More people were going there than returning, as is the case in any war.  And the great acceleration, the downhill plunge, was just beginning.  You have to remember none of us knew how anything would turn out.  
--From Who Do You Love, a collection of short stories by Jean Thompson (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999).  It was published in paperback in 2000 by Simon & Schuster.  This excerpt is from "The Amish," a short story which was first published in American Short Fiction.

I was looking at a poster for Midnight Alarm when the first
        minivan blew up.  Ten minutes after the second explosion
        we heard the sirens, and I knew they didn't sound
the same as in the Garden in 1950, alerting firefighters
        laid out on cots as if asleep to rise and dowse a scaffolding 
        structure painted like a tenement or brownstone.
--From "Fire in the Streets," a poem by Gavin Adair, Mid-American Review, Volume 27, Number 1 (Fall 2006), p. 125.

. . .  Love's insects land on your arm 
& draw a little blood.  Instinctively, you squash them with your palm.
Amazing the seasonal shifts we permit ourselves: It seemed lucky 
when our apartment burned.  My father circumvented the superintendent 
& illegally installed a new invention: the air conditioner, overloading vintage wiring.

Next scene: a thousand people in exile, clutching (what would be the one
possession you'd snatch in a panic?), & we all watched, hypnotized by flames, 
like a scene from a '50s Godzilla movie, the lives of families transformed by my father's
desire for a comfortable summer. . . . 
--From "Unitarian Birds," a poem by Bruce Cohen, Mid-American Review, Volume 28 (Fall 2007), pp. 60-61.

The first time our father brought Andrea to the Dutch House, Sandy, our housekeeper, came to my sister's room and told us to come downstairs.  "Your father has a friend he wants you to meet," she said.
--From The Dutch House, a novel by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2019). 

A little bit of Dear Life, and Mrs. Dalloway

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... he was annoyed when the girl who took the tickets told him that she was going to have to quit, because she was having a baby. He might have expected this--she had been married for half a year, and in those days you were supposed to get out of the public eye before you began to show--but he so disliked change and the idea of people having private lives that he was taken by surprise.

From "Leaving Maverley," originally published in The New Yorker (November 28, 2011) and reprinted in Dear Life, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012).

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And then, opening her eyes, how fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked . . .

From Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Virginia Woolf (Harcourt, 1925).