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

~
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). 

A story collection by Fumio Yamamoto, a novel by Solvej Balle, short stories by Camille Bordas and Emma Cairns Watson, and a poem by D. Nurkse

~
As it was my birthday, our table was covered with plates and glasses from the full-course meal and a bottle of wine we usually would never order. In the seven years we'd been together, we'd had our share of arguments, but this was the first time the atmosphere between us had become so charged and heavy.
—From The Dilemmas of Working Women, a collection of five stories by Fumio Yamamoto, translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom (HarperVia, 2025). The book was originally published in Japanese as Planaria (Bungeishunju Ltd., 2000). Also, just a quick shoutout to the hardcover jacket designer, Sarah Kellogg, who used a photograph by Ulas & Merve (Merve Türkan and Ulaş Kesebir, a pair of London-based Turkish photographers who work together professionally). The cover is quite striking. Along with reading the print book, I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Yuriri Naka. I really like listening to her. She narrated a different book that I listened to in 2025: Hunchback, a short novel by Saou Ichikawa (Hogarth, 2025). The HarperCollins page for The Dilemmas of Working Women has a sample of the audiobook as well as a sample of the print book. The segment above is from the title story and appears on page 162 of the hardcover. 

It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought. I have got used to the sounds, to the gray morning light and to the rain that will soon start to fall in the garden.
—From On the Calculation of Volume I, a novel by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (New Directions, 2024). This is the first book in a series of seven and has been published by arrangement with Copenhagen Literary Agency. Originally published as Om udregning af rumfang I (Pelagraf, 2020).

Repatriation—there's such a ring to it, such drama. I imagined maimed bodies in dirty tents, nurses changing brown, bloodied gauze, bending over beds to tell the wounded, "The call came in—you're going home." Yet I worked in Special Consular Services at our Embassy in Paris. The Americans I helped repatriate mostly broke legs in Pigalle or crashed rental cars in Normandy. 
—From "Chicago on the Seine," a short story by Camille Bordas, The New Yorker (June 17, 2024), pp. 46-52. 

Nadine had selected this service in particular because it was the only one that did not require you to submit your name or photograph. All you had to do was provide your phone number and your answer to the question, "If you had the opportunity to dissect another person, who would it be, and which part of their insides would you be most interested in looking at?"
—From "The Dissection Question," a short story by Emma Cairns Watson, One Story, Issue 310 (February 29, 2024).

There was a protest outside Thomas Jefferson 
and children were lying down histrionically, . . . 
—From "The Age of Miracle Weapons," a poem by D. Nurkse, The New Yorker (June 10, 2024), p. 43. 

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

~
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).

Poetry by Edgar Kunz and Leigh Lucas, and short stories by Mary Grimm, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Bennett Sims

~
He was like tissue paper
coming apart in water.
—From Fixer, a collection of poetry by Edgar Kunz (Ecco, 2023). These lines are from "Fixer" [I held him together], which was first published (as "Piano") in The New Yorker (November 7, 2022), p. 41. It appears on pages 46-47 of the paperback. 

All that week, Bob Lilly was working on the gas tank of his car, which had to be replaced. He was doing it in my driveway because he lived with his sister, and she wouldn't let him do it at her house. He was the smartest person I had ever met, which didn't mean that he was in any way a success in life or had as much sense as my cat. 
—From "Fate and Ruin," a short story by Mary Grimm, One Story, Issue 265 (May 15, 2020).

Buchi woke to the thwack-thwack of the machete in the grass and the offended clucks of the chicken who took issue with the noise. Every few moments a ping would echo as the blade struck the stucco of the house. She counted on the sharp sound to wake her daughters.  
—From What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, a collection of short stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead Books, 2017). This section is from "Buchi's Girls," which begins on page 123 of the hardcover. This particular story originally appeared in Five Points (Vol. 16, No. 3).

The boy begs his mother to buy him a balloon. As they leave the grocery store and cross the parking lot, he holds the balloon by a string in his hand. It is round and red, and it bobs a few feet above him. Suddenly his mother looks down and orders him not to release the balloon. Her voice is stern. She says that if he loses it, she will not buy him another. The boy tightens his grip on the string. He had no intention of releasing the balloon. 
—From "Fables," a short story published in White Dialogues: Stories by Bennett Sims (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), pp. 127-139 in the paperback. "Fables" was previously published in Conjunctions and Subtropics (as "The Balloon"), and anthologized in the Pushcart Prize XXXIX. I mentioned a couple of stories from one of his other books, Other Minds and Other Stories (2023), in a blog post from 2024.

I empty my pockets of odd little flyers and tear-off numbers
for pest solutions and local handymen. I save them; some
may prove critical at the end of the world.
—From "I empty my pockets of odd little flyers," a poem published in Landsickness, a chapbook of poetry by Leigh Lucas (Tupelo Press, 2024, p. 9). This poem was first published in The Tusculum Review. 

A novel by Geetanjali Shree, a novel excerpt by Susan Minot, and stories by Uche Okonkwo, Akhil Sharma, and Alejandro Zambra

~
Of course Beti had heard; the ears on one's back are rarely blocked. And indeed, her friend may or may not have been aware of the household's quirks. Whether or not the chrysanthemums heard, it made no difference to them. It was their season, they were enjoying leaping up at the slightest thing, and so continued on with this pastime. 
—From Tomb of Sand, a novel by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (HarperVia, 2023). This segment is from page 29 of the hardcover. The book was originally published in Hindi as Ret Samadhi in India (Rajkamal Prakashan, 2018) and was originally published in English as Tomb of Sand in the United Kingdom (Tilted Axis Press, 2021). The translation of this novel is quite long, with a lot of wordplay and tangential flights of fancy. My favorite sections are about the chrysanthemums, the crows, and Ma's friend Rosie Bua.  

Udoka was disappointed to find that her prospective in-laws' house wasn't two stories tall, with a uniformed guard and a big gate to keep out prying eyes. But though not as impressive as Udoka had imagined, it was still a better house than her mother's. It was painted, for one, and the corrugated roof wasn't coming apart with rust.
—From "Nwunye Belgium," the opening story of A Kind of Madness, a short story collection by Uche Okonkwo (Tin House, 2024). "Nwunye Belgium" was first published, as "Our Belgian Wife," in One Story, Issue 248 (December 20, 2018) and was reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading (Mariner Books, 2019).  

She did not hesitate now. She phoned Dr. Rosencrantz. But Dr. Rosencrantz was not the doctor on call, the answering service said. A Dr. Estin answered. He sounded as if he was outside. She heard a bird singing. Dr. Estin was decidedly unconcerned, and even over the phone she could tell he was bored. It was perfectly normal, he explained, to cough up a little blood after a tonsillectomy. It was nothing to worry about. He seemed irritated that she was even bothering him. 
—From "The Operation," a novel excerpt by Susan Minot, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 2 (August 9, 2024). This story also has an illustration by Michelle Thompson.

Mrs. Narayan was small, dark-skinned, oval-faced. She had a wonderful singsong voice. She'd come up to you at temple on Holi or Diwali and offer congratulations so heartfelt you'd feel as if it were the first time the day had ever been celebrated. We all liked her. She was an immigrant, too, but she didn't seem to have jangled nerves the way we did. She cooked for many of us and regularly tried to refuse payment. "This is from my side," she'd say. "A horse can't be friends with grass," we might answer.
—From "The Narayans," a short story by Akhil Sharma, The New Yorker (August 26, 2024).

The first lie Julio told Emilia was that he had read Marcel Proust. He didn't usually lie about his reading, but that second night, when they both knew they were starting something, and that however long it lasted, this something was going to be important—that night, Julio deepened his voice, feigning intimacy, and said that, yes, he had read Proust when he was seventeen, during a summer in Quintero. 
—From Bonsai, a very short novel by Alejandro Zambra, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Penguin, 2022). Originally published in Barcelona, Spain, as Bonsái (Editorial Anagrama, 2006).

Fiction by Ben Okri, Claire Keegan, Sayaka Murata, and Jai Chakrabarti, and a graphic novel by Yeon-sik Hong

~ 
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 Elena Ferrante, Kiara Brinkman, Rumena Bužarovska, and Hiromi Kawakami, and poetry by Louise Glück and José Antonio Rodríguez

~ 
Day and night come
hand in hand like a boy and a girl
pausing only to eat wild berries out of a dish
painted with pictures of birds.
—From Winter Recipes from the Collective, poems by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). This section is from "Poem," pp. 3-4. My favorite poem in this collection is "The Denial of Death," pp. 5-11.

Don't misunderstand me, I love a good poem
Like half my Facebook friends, one that transports you
To a corner of the soul you didn't know was there
Because you couldn’t find the precise metaphor,
Even if you felt it, like that time my parents saw
A local news story of an older woman asking for help
With an ailing husband, and I volunteered to drive them . . .
—From "Shelter," a poem by José Antonio Rodríguez, The New Yorker (April 6, 2020), pp. 48-49.

Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri, in Rione Alto. Everything—the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a frigid February, those words—remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story . . .
—From The Lying Life of Adults, a novel by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2020).

Ronan's mother made him and his brother practice acting bad so it would look real when the nanny from the TV show came. The boys practiced punching at each other and biting, fighting over broken plastic toys that neither of them played with anymore. Their mother said that this was her chance to be discovered. National fucking TV.
        Ronan, she said, let me see you do a temper tantrum.
        I'm tired, he told her—because he was ten, too old for tantrums. It wouldn't be realistic.
—From "If You Can Hear Me Thinking," a short story by Kiara Brinkman, One Story, Volume 6, Number 1 (April 20, 2007).

Nenad lay down on his bed and turned his face to the wall, whimpering quietly now. He didn't react when I touched him. I sat on the side of the bed and gave him a lecture on stealing. I told him that if he stole things, he'd wind up in jail. But since he didn't react to either my caresses or my words I left him there and went to the living room. Gene was sitting staring at a blank TV screen.
        "Maybe you shouldn't have beaten him so hard," I said. "He's really upset."
—From My Husband, stories by Rumena Bužarovska, translated from the Macedonian by Paul Filev (Dalkey Archive Press, 2019). This segment is from "Genes," pp. 33-54.

A white cloth was lying at the foot of a zelkova tree. When I walked over and picked it up, I saw a child underneath. 
—From People from My Neighborhood, stories by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull Press, 2021).

Fiction by Per Petterson, Howard Norman, Susan Perabo, and Magda Szabó

~
Day was slowly breaking.  I had been standing there for more than two hours and hadn't had a single bite.  It annoyed me, but frankly, fish wasn't my favourite dish any more.  Not like it was in the past.  The fish I did catch, I always gave away.  
        As a rule I drove home before the first cars came down the hill towards the bridge, but today I had frittered my time away.  I hadn't even started to pack my bag, and the cars that were coming were classy cars, expensive cars.  I turned my back to the road, my frayed navy blue reefer jacket wrapped tightly round me.  I'd had that jacket ever since I was a boy in Mørk, and only one of the old brass buttons was still intact, and I had a woollen cap on as blue as the jacket, pulled down over my ears, so from behind I could have been anyone.
        I tied the bait rig to the railing, turned round and crouched down to take a cigarette from the pack I had in my bag.  I really ought to stop smoking, I had started to cough in the mornings, it was a bad sign, and then a car stopped right in front of me with the window on the driver's side level with my face.  I had the cigarette between my lips, and as I stood up, I lit it with a match behind my cupped hand.  I always used matches, I didn't like that plastic.
        It was a grey Mercedes, brand new, and the paintwork was shiny as skin can be shiny at certain times, in certain situations.  Then the window slid down without a sound.
        'It's Jim, isn't it,' he said.
        I knew him at once.  It was Tommy.  His hair had thinned and was greying.  But the horizontal scar above his left eye was still evident, white, luminous silver.  He was wearing a purple coat buttoned to the throat.  It didn't look cheap.  He was the same, and yet he looked like Jon Voigt in Enemy of the State.  Leather gloves.  Blue eyes.  Slightly out of focus.  
        'I guess it is,' I said.
        'Well, I'll be damned.  How long has it been.  Twenty-five years.  Thirty.'  And I said: 
        'About that.  A bit more.'
        He smiled.  'We each went our separate ways that time, didn't we.'  He said it neither this nor that way.
        'That's true,' I said.  He smiled, he was happy to see me, or so it seemed.  
--From I Refuse, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Graywolf Press, 2015). First published in Norwegian as Jeg nekter (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 2012).  First published in English in London, England (Harvill Secker, Random House, 2014).

My name is Fabian Vas.  I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland.  You would not have heard of me.  Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it.  Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.
         I discovered my gift for drawing and painting birds early on.  I should better say that my mother saw that someone had filled in the margins of my third-form primer with the sketches of wings, talons, and heads of local birds.  "I though this primer was brand-new," she said.  "But it's full of these bird drawings.  Well, somebody has talent."  After a night's sleep she realized that the pencil work was mine and was what I had been concentrating on during my school lessons.  Actually she seemed quite pleased, and at breakfast the following morning said, "Awfully nice to learn something so unmistakable about one's offspring."  She tore out a page full of heads of gulls and ospreys, wrote, "October 28, 1900," on it, and nailed it to the kitchen door. 
--From The Bird Artist, a novel by Howard Norman (hardcover was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994; softcover by Picador, 1995).

My mother was thrilled to be dying of brain cancer after a lifetime of smoking. She had dodged the bullet of lung cancer after all, she triumphantly announced to me on the phone that summer afternoon. All those years my brothers and I had hassled her, lectured her, begged her, berated her (“Don’t you want to see your grandchildren graduate from college?”)—and for what? Her lungs were fine!
--From Why They Run the Way They Do, a short story collection by Susan Perabo (Simon & Schuster, 2016).  This excerpt is from "Indulgence," pp. 155-171 in the paperback version of the book.  "Indulgence," a short story by Susan Perabo, was first published in One Story, Issue Number 178 (May 3, 2013).

I seldom dream.  When I do, I wake with a start, bathed in sweat.  Then I lie back, waiting for my frantic heart to slow, and reflect on the overwhelming power of night's spell.  As a child and young woman, I had no dreams, either good or bad, but in old age I am confronted repeatedly with horrors from my past, all the more dismaying because compressed and compacted, and more terrible than anything I have lived through.  In fact nothing has ever happened to me of the kind that now drags me screaming from my sleep.
        My dreams are always the same, down to the finest detail, a vision that returns again and again.  In this never-changing dream I am standing in our entrance hall at the foot of the stairs, facing the steel frame and reinforced shatterproof window of the outer door, and I am struggling to turn the lock.  Outside in the street is an ambulance.  Through the glass I can make out the shimmering silhouettes of the paramedics, distorted to unnatural size, their swollen faces haloed like moons.  The key turns, but my efforts are in vain: I cannot open the door.  But I must let the rescuers in, or they'll be too late to save my patient.
--From The Door, a novel by Magda Szabó, translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix (New York Review Books, 2015).  It was originally published in Hungarian as Az ajtó (Magvető, 1987); this English translation was first published in Great Britain (Harvill Secker, 2005).

Fiction by Joseph O'Neill, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lily King, and Martin Suter

~
The cat looked nothing like Buster.  It didn't even look like a cat.  The vet offered some clearly dishonest and meaningless statistics about the thing's chance of recovery.  She also referred to the expense of keeping it alive.  Martha held Robert's hand as he listened to all of this.  When she understood that Robert could not speak, she took it upon herself to ask the vet the necessary questions.  When the vet again said, The operation was a complete success, Martha said, you know what?  We'd appreciate it if you stopped saying that. 
        The next morning, nothing had changed.  The plug was pulled on Buster.  There were various options with regard to the remains.  Robert decided on the gratis option, namely the garbage.  Buster was garbage at this point.  Over the next few days, handwritten condolence cards arrived from vets.  Bills, too.
--From Good Trouble, a collection of short stories by Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon Books, 2018).  This segment is from "Goose" (pp. 118-131 in hardcover).  The collection also includes stories which first appeared in The New Yorker (e.g., "The Poltroon Husband" and "The Sinking of the Houston") and Harper's Magazine (e.g., "The Trusted Traveler"). 

Whenever I woke up, night or day, I'd shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed.  I'd get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again.  I lost track of time in this way.  Days passed.  Weeks.  A few months went by. 
--From My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press, 2018).

The summer of 1986, the summer I was fourteen, my parents went to the Dordogne for eight weeks.  My father had been unwell, and it was thought that France, where he had studied as a young man, would enable his recovery.  Through the university’s employment office, my mother hired two sophomores to house-sit for the time they would be out of the country.  As I came with the house, these two college boys were obliged to take care of me, too.
--From "When in the Dordogne," a short story by Lily King, One Story, Issue 212 (October 26, 2015).

No sooner had the barman served him his martini than a woman entered the bar, put her coat and handbag on the bar stool beside Weynfeldt, sat on the next one over and ordered a gin fizz.  She was wearing a green silk Chinese blouse, white arms extending from its short, close sleeves, a tight black skirt and high heels a similar shade of green to the blouse.  Her long red hair was tied up, secured with an imitation tortoiseshell clasp to free her neck, which the blouse's high collar circled loosely.  
--From The Last Weynfeldt, a novel by Martin Suter, translated from the German by Steph Morris (New Vessel Press, 2016).  Originally published in German as Der letzte Weynfeldt (Diogenes Verlag: Zürich, Switzerland, 2008).

In an odd coincidence, the cover design and one of the major plot lines of the book feature Femme nue devant une salamandre (Nude Facing a Stove), a painting by Félix Vallotton.

I published the Spring 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review in April 2019, and I picked up and started reading The Last Weynfeldt earlier this month (May 2019).  The cover art for AVR's spring issue, which I selected well before reading the book, was Intimité (Intimacy), a painting by Félix Vallotton.  There are times when everything seems interconnected. . . .

Two poems and two short stories

~
John Locke says children don't understand elapsed time, 
and when I was a girl it was true
and it remains true--
--From "Essay on 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,'" a poem by Catherine Barnett, The New Yorker (March 19, 2018), pp. 52-53.

Our house, the very clever work of a local architect, consists of five shipping containers raised several feet above the ground.  Half of one container functions as a garden office and the other half functions as a covered footbridge over the stream that runs through our land; previously, you had to negotiate a pair of old planks. 
--From "The Poltroon Husband," a short story by Joseph O'Neill, The New Yorker (March 12, 2018), pp. 66-70.

The Arabs used to say, 
When a stranger appears at your door, 
feed him for three days 
before asking who he is, . . . 
--From "Red Brocade," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, from her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle (Greenwillow Books, 2002) and reprinted by the Academy of American Poets. 

He tossed the unfinished coffee into the trash.  As he was on his way back to Spice Grill, a Mercedes pulled quickly alongside him, making a wide, sweeping turn into one of Mr. Raj's private parking spots.  The Mercedes came to a short stop, and Boss Bhatti, a Spice Grill regular and Raj's business partner, stepped out in a suit and tie.  Boss Bhatti called Vikram over to the car.  He needed help carrying crates of mangoes into the restaurant.  Vikram reached inside the Mercedes and grabbed a stack.  
--From "Guerrilla Marketing," a short story by Sanjay Agnihotri, One Story, Issue 236 (December 28, 2017).

Fiction by Chris Drangle and Ha Jin, and an essay on DNA editing by Michael Specter

~
Soleil was on her way to meet Warren for their first date when she ran out of gas.  The engine shuddered on its last fumes, and she looked down the highway at a long stretch of nothing.  She was alone on the road, save for one pair of headlights drawing closer in the rearview.  She put her hazards on, hoping to coast as long as possible, but the vehicle behind her, a black SUV, raced up to her bumper and stayed there.  High beams filled her mirrors.  She braked and pulled halfway onto the shoulder, and still it loomed close.  Teenage girl, no gas, highway at dusk--she felt her vulnerability like a chill in the air.  But as she rolled to a stop, the SUV swerved and accelerated, finally passing her with a snarl of engine rev.  She didn't want to look but did; two men in the cabin stared back, lit red by the instrument panel.  The driver had a dark beard.
--From "Optimistic People," a short story by Chris Drangle, One Story, Issue 224 (December 31, 2016).

When my roommate moved out, I was worried that Mrs. Chen might increase the rent.  I had been paying three hundred dollars a month for half a room.  If my landlady demanded more, I would have to look for another place.  I liked this colonial house.  In front of it stood an immense weeping cherry tree that attracted birds and gave a bucolic impression, though it was already early summer and the blossoming season had passed.  The house was close to downtown Flushing, and you could hear the buzz of traffic on Main Street.  It was also near where I worked, convenient for everything.  Mrs. Chen took up the first floor; my room was upstairs, where three young women also lived.  My former roommate, an apprentice to a carpenter, had left because the three female tenants were prostitutes and often received clients in the house.  To be honest, I didn't feel comfortable about that either, but I had grown used to the women, and especially liked Huong, a twiggy Vietnamese in her early twenties whose parents had migrated to Cholon from China three decades ago, when Saigon fell and the real estate market there became affordable.  Also, I had just arrived in New York and at times found it miserable to be alone.
--From "The House Behind a Weeping Cherry," a short story by Ha Jin, from his collection A Good Fall (Vintage International, 2009), pp. 195-219.  This story originally appeared in The New Yorker (April 7, 2008) and was later included in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, edited by Laura Furman (Anchor Books, 2009).

Early on an unusually blustery day in June, Kevin Esvelt climbed aboard a ferry at Woods Hole, bound for Nantucket Island.  Esvelt, an assistant professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was on his way to present to local health officials a plan for ridding the island of one of its most persistent problems: Lyme disease.  He had been up for much of the night working on his slides, and the fatigue showed.  
--From "Rewriting the Code of Life," an essay about DNA editing by Michael Specter, The New Yorker (January 2, 2017), pp. 34-43.

Short fiction by Yoko Ogawa, an essay by D. T. Max, and more

~
A waiter led us into a private room at the back of the restaurant, where the man was already seated at a table too large for three, sipping a garish red cocktail.  For some reason I had assumed he would be accompanied by a secretary or bodyguard, but he was alone.
        A chandelier hung from the ceiling and flowers had been arranged around the room.  The silverware gleamed, the tablecloth was blindingly white. 
        They barely greeted each other, exchanging little more than vague, meaningless grunts.  She sat down without introducing me, and I realized the moment for such formalities had already passed.  
--From "Fruit Juice," a short story by Yoko Ogawa, published in her collection of interconnected stories, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Picador, 1998).

Darek Fidyka, who is forty-one years old, . . . was born and raised in Pradzew, a small farming town in central Poland, not far from Lodz.  At 3 A.M. on July 27, 2010, Fidyka and his girlfriend, Justyna, woke to the sound of someone smashing Fidyka's Volkswagen outside their house, a few miles from Pradzew.  They got out of bed, rushed out the door, and found her ex-husband, Jaroslaw, battering the car with a cinder block.
--From "One Small Step: A paraplegic undergoes pioneering surgery," an essay by D. T. Max, The New Yorker (January 25, 2016), pp. 48-57.

beside myself in Texas the doctors asking my beloved
to give his pain a number one to ten his answer is always
two I tell them eight the holly bush in the yard is putting out new leaves... 
--From "Chameleon," a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt, The New Yorker (May 7, 2012), p. 34.

Weird Pig told the mule to send him email.  Send the real kind, he said.  All right?
        The mule was at a loss.  He had heard of email and mail, but mules were prohibited by law from sending or receiving either one.  He wasn't sure exactly what they were.
        Weird Pig didn't know what email was either, but he had overheard Farmer Dan talking about it with one of the chickens.  He thought he should let on to someone that he knew what it was.  It might improve his status on the farm.
--From "Real Mail," a short story by Robert Long Foreman, The Collapsar (January 15, 2016).

Boy 2 rescued you on the playground.  There was a kid who always showed up dressed like a cowboy, who one day climbed the ladder just behind you, put his lasso around your neck, and pushed you down the slide.  Boy 2 ran over to see if you were hurt--you weren't, just shocked by the sudden viciousness of it--and to shout at the other boy, "Leave her alone!"  He stood over you while you loosened the rope and helped you pull the noose off over your head.  
--From "An Inventory," a short story by Joan Wickersham, One Story, Volume 12, Number 8 (October 27, 2014).

Five poems from Rattle, short stories from Post Road Magazine and One Story, and a novel

~
One fear replaces another.  Each night now I wake 
in fear that I've crushed her in bed.  Sometimes it's so bad 
I wake the husband and the two of us, in the slight light 
of the streetlight, are in there, in the king bed digging, 
through pillows and sheets, looking for our baby.
Digging and digging as if our bed was the terrible ground
beneath the floorboards.  We sweat, breathe heavy; 
I'm crying.   

The power to kill something is so strong up in me, 
and so strange to be right next to the part of me
that can love something this much. . . . 
--From "She Rings Like a Bell Through the Night," a poem by Jan LaPerle, Rattle, Number 35 (Summer 2011).

Mostly love is about grunt work,
heaving unwieldy pieces of furniture 
up a trackless mountain . . .
--From "Where We Are Most Tender," a poem by Francesca Bell, Rattle, Number 40 (Summer 2013).

The day I finally rose staggering
from our bed of kryptonite . . . 
--From "First Responders," a poem by Francesca Bell, Rattle, Number 35 (Summer 2011).

In a black          tank-top 
my man             can say
just about         anything.
--From "In a Black Tank Top," a poem by Danielle DeTiberus, Rattle, Number 43 (Spring 2014).  "In a Black Tank Top" was chosen by Sherman Alexie for Best American Poetry 2015.

I gave the waitress in the café a fifty & she gave me my change got sidetracked & left the fifty on the counter all alone with me & my conscience . . . 
--From "A Poem for Uncertainties," a poem by Mark Terrill, Rattle, Number 27 (Summer 2007).

She's eating the scones and I'm watching, sipping black tea with milk but no sugar.  Actually, she hasn't quite started yet.  She's still spreading clotted cream on each half of the split scone, then homemade jam on top of that.  As she does this, she warns me she might make groaning noises.  Just so, you know, I know.  That's fine, I shrug, feeling little bits of me catch fire.  I've got the teacup in my hand, my finger crooked in the little handle that's too small for it so the circulation's getting cut off.  I watch her bite into the scone with her little bunny teeth.  I watch gobs of clotted cream catch in either corner of her lip.  She tilts her head back, closes her eyes, starts to make what must be the groaning noises.  I pour myself more tea and cup it in both hands like it's warming them, even though it's gone cold.  
--From "The Girl I Hate," a short story by Mona Awad, Post Road Magazine, Issue 27.

Consider the look on Whatsherface's face when I bought her a well drink and told her I lived on a sailboat.  Maybe my life wasn't so bad. . . . All considered, it was a damp version of pretty okay.  
          But then she asked what I did for work, and I told her.
          "I pump fuel at the marina fuel dock for eight dollars an hour, but mostly I read magazines and eat sandwiches, or watch my dog laze in the sun and lick pelican shit off the cement."
          The look changed, got scrunchier.  
--From "All Lateral," a short story by Matt Sumell, first published in One Story, Volume 12, Number 11 (January 19, 2015).  

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.  A friend rang me up and read it to me.  Nothing special.  Something a rookie reporter fresh out of college might've written for practice.
          The date, a street corner, a person driving a truck, a pedestrian, a casualty, an investigation of possible negligence.
          Sounded like one of those poems on the inner flap of a magazine.  
          "Where's the funeral?" I asked.  
          "You got me," he said.  "Did she even have a family?" 
--From A Wild Sheep Chase, a novel by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (Vintage Books, 1989).  

A few stories by Miranda July and Aimee Bender

~
One looked like a woman but was too tall, or maybe it was just that the other one was so small, like a little boy.  I saw them around Portland all the time that summer.  Were they young or old?  Couldn't tell.  Were they from the present, or another era; i.e., time-travellers?  Wasn't sure.  They were in black and white, neckties and knickers.  A little dirty.  Always leaning on each other.   

--From "TV," a story by Miranda July, The New Yorker (June 9, 2014). 

 

I met Arlene in college, in the freshman dorm.  We were not roommates but suite-mates in the corner section of a squat brick house at the center of a small college campus in the middle of Ohio.  We both had moved from opposite coasts with the desire for a personalized liberal-arts college experience and had become friends due to proximity and availability more than compatibility.  For example, we had nothing in common.  She: Blue Ridge Mountain town.  Me: central Californian suburbs. She: declared international-relations major with three eclectic minors.  Me: not yet totally decided.  The men she liked were brutish jocks; I had located within two weeks every single soulful gentleman on campus who wrote poetry.  I found them by the length of their hair or the wear of their jeans.  She liked big-budget romantic movies; I saw every documentary I could find at the library, and if I’d had any retention ability, I would’ve stored a great deal of knowledge about the world.  She had a perpetual perm, because she felt it added volume to the thinness of her hair and gave her a look of energy; I was hard-pressed to use a brush because I preferred a ponytail, and part of trying to attract those poet-men was to look a little like I had wandered onto campus by accident after having spent ten years with the wolves behind some farmhouse, living off scraps and reveling in the pure air like a half-girl Mowgli, half-woman Thoreau. . . .

--From "Bad Return," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by One Story (Issue 158, January 2011) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013), trade paperback edition pp. 99-129.  

 

I can't remember the words of things.  The words for words.  I have lost my words.  What's this from?  Is it the Internet?  Texting?  E-mail?  I see it in kids, too; it's not an aging thing.  An aging issue.  I do know that at the supermarket yesterday, I asked the guy where the weighing thing was, the thing that weighs other things, flailing around with my hands, indicating, and he crumpled up his forehead and said, "You mean the scale?"

     "Yes"--I said, beaming, pumping his hand--"the scale!"  As if he was the winner of an SAT prize giveaway.  . . .

--From "Wordkeepers," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by McSweeney's (Issue 41, July 2012) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013),  pp. 153-160.   

 

I was at the Bev with Sylv and we were eating Chinese food takeout from Panda Express . . . she was going on about how she'd checked her messages and Jack hadn't called even though he said he would but maybe he was caught in traffic.  Even though he has a phone?  But I'd never say that out loud.  Sylv's the first friend I've had in a long time who really is way high on the friend pyramid, and the way she dances!  She bops around really energetically but she's also still.  Like she's moving her torso but her feet don't move, and then sometimes she'll take one step, and it feels like a thesis statement.  Like it is a topic sentence about her butt.        

--From "Lemonade," a short story by Aimee Bender, published by Tin House (Issue 33, Fall 2007) and reprinted in her collection The Color Master (Doubleday/Random House/Anchor Books, 2013), pp. 85-97.   

"Indulgence" by Susan Perabo

~
My mother was thrilled to be dying of brain cancer after a lifetime of smoking. She had dodged the bullet of lung cancer after all, she triumphantly announced to me on the phone that summer afternoon. All those years my brothers and I had hassled her, lectured her, begged her, berated her (“Don’t you want to see your grandchildren graduate from college?”)—and for what? Her lungs were fine! . . .

"Indulgence," a short story by Susan Perabo, published in One Story, Issue Number 178 (May 3, 2013). The link has a sample of the story and a Q&A with Susan Perabo. (The editor's notes mention this, but I will, too: there are some spoilers in the Q&A.) This was a really poignant story.

The Hunger Games trilogy and two stories from BASS

~
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, novels by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively). Not that the books in this trilogy need any additional publicity, but they are remarkable.

"The Ambush," a short story by Donna Tartt, first published in Tin House (Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 2005/2006) and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 2006, edited by Ann Patchett and series editor Katrina Kenison (Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pp. 30-42).

"So Much for Artemis," a short story by Patrick Ryan, first published in One Story (No. 53, March 10, 2005) and reprinted in Send Me by Patrick Ryan (Dial, 2006) and in The Best American Short Stories 2006, edited by Ann Patchett and series editor Katrina Kenison (Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pp. 70-90).

A short story collection and a novel

~
"An hour later, a couple lingered in front of a death mask that cost several hundred dollars. They both wore shorts and sandals and carried mesh tote bags. They spoke in a foreign language; the man kept touching the space between the woman's shoulders. Joyce watched them from behind the register. They were young, early twenties, and looked happy. She both envied and pitied them."

This segment is from "We Are Calling to Offer You a Fabulous Life," a short story by Laura van den Berg. It was first published in the Northwest Review and then in her first book, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009). The story collection also includes the title story (first printed in One Story), which I discussed in a previous post, and "Where We Must Be," about a failed actress who takes a job pretending to be Bigfoot.

I also recently read Jhumpa Lahiri's first published novel, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin, 2003).