Fiction by Ling Ma, Per Petterson, Tove Ditlevsen, and Lydia Millet, and essays by David Sedaris

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The last thing I remembered was her demonstration of putting on an oxygen mask in case of emergency. Standing in front of the curtain divider separating Economy from First Class, she had mimed disaster protocol. In case of an ocean landing, the seat cushion could be used as a flotation device. I had closed my eyes then. In case of a crash, I thought, as the Ambien took effect, my husband would put the oxygen mask on me. He would inflate my seat cushion for me. We'd reconcile our marriage in the face of catastrophe.
          I disembarked from the plane. Peter was not at the exit either. A welcome sign, printed in English, greeted all arriving travelers: THERE ARE NO STRANGERS IN GARBOZA. 
—From Bliss Montage, a collection of short stories by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022). This segment, from the short story "Returning" (pp. 87-136), appears on page 88 of the hardcover. 

I cannot remember exactly the first time I took the bus down to Oslo city centre to walk the streets of an evening, go to bars, visit pubs and cafés, but it must have been shortly after Turid marched out, the same month, most likely, and therefore one long year after the ship burned with my loved ones in it, as they put it on the news, his loved ones perished onboard a burning ship, in a cabin, in a corridor, they vanished at sea, they fell out of this life not far from a duty-free shop. 
          What I remember is sitting in my usual seat at the very back of the bus, on the way down from Bjølsen, Sagene, wearing my best clothes, which was my reefer jacket, the same old, but with new brass buttons I had bought from a helpful lady with needle and thread at the Button House behind the Parliament building, and every button shiny bright with an anchor stamped on it. I wore a yellow neckerchief with the knot at the back and outmoded, undramatically flared trousers to accentuate the sailor style. I was freshly showered, my hair freshly washed, I was making up for what was lost, whatever lost there was, I was thirty-eight years old, everything was blown, I had nothing left.
—From Men in My Situation, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey (Graywolf Press, 2022). The excerpt above appears on page 19 of the hardcover. This book was originally published as Menn i min situasjon in Norway in 2018 by Forlaget Oktober AS, and it was first published in English by Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House UK in 2021.

In the evening it was a little better. She could smooth it out and look at it, cautiously, hoping that someday she would have a full view of it, as if it were an unfinished, multi-colored Gobelin tapestry whose pattern would perhaps be revealed one day. The voices came back to her; with a little patience, they could be unraveled from each other like the strands of a tangled ball of yarn. She could think about the words in peace, without fearing that new ones would appear before the night was over. During this time the night held the days apart only with difficulty, and if she happened to breathe a hole into the darkness, like on a frost-covered windowpane, the morning might shine into her eyes hours ahead of time.
—From The Faces, a short novel by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally (Picador, 2022). This book was originally published in 1968 by Hasselbalch, Denmark, as Ansigterne. 

I had assumed for some reason that a firing range would be outdoors, but instead it was situated in a strip mall, next to a tractor-supply store. Inside were glass display cases filled with weapons, and a wall of purses a woman could hide a dainty pistol in. This was a niche market I knew nothing about until I returned to Lisa’s house later that day and went online. There I found websites selling gun-concealing vests, T-shirts, jackets—you name it. One company makes boxer briefs with a holster in the back, which they call "Compression Concealment Shorts" but which I would call gunderpants.
—From Happy-Go-Lucky, a collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown & Company, 2022). This segment is from the essay "Active Shooter" (pp. 3-15), which first appeared in The New Yorker (July 2, 2018).

When he decided to leave New York, he chose Arizona because of some drone footage he'd seen. It wove through the canyons of red-rock mountain foothills, over sage-green scrub and towering cacti with their arms outstretched. Then up into the higher elevations, where there were forests of ponderosa pine.
—From Dinosaurs, a novel by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022). 

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

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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).

Poetry and nonfiction from The New Yorker, and books by Per Petterson and Milena Michiko Flašar

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A car's tires thu-thunk

over the rubbery black trip wire at the oil change, 

triggering a fat bell, 

and a group of girls in silver leotards are reflected 

like spatters of sap in its windows--

--From "Strawberries," a poem by Gabrielle Bates, The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2018), p. 57.

In California, my mom worked an entry-level job at what now might be called a Silicon Valley tech business.  It made audiocassettes.  My dad made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and popcorn.  He picked me up from preschool, strapping me into the yellow child seat mounted at the back of his bike.    
--From "What Is Possible," a short piece on parenting by Mohsin Hamid, The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2018), p. 71.

In the park he was the only salaryman.  In the park I was the only hikikomori. Something was not quite right with us.  He should really be in his office, in one of the high-rises, I should stick to my room, within four walls.  We should not be here, or at least not pretend we belong here.  
--From I Called Him Necktie, a novel by Milena Michiko Flašar, translated from the German by Sheila Dickie (New Vessel Press, 2014).  Originally published in German as Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (Verlag Klaus Wagenbach: Berlin, Germany, 2012).

Dad had a face that Arvid loved to watch, and at the same time made him nervous as it wasn't just a face but also a rock in the forest with its furrows and hollows, at least if he squinted when he looked.  
--From Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, stories by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Graywolf Press, 2015).  First published in Norwegian as Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 1987).  First published in English by Harvill Secker, Random House (London, 2013).  

The white houses sank and withdrew into the countryside and slowly the fjord grew wider.  The Vistula passed Drøbak and sailed on through the sound where the wreck of the battleship Blücher lay on the seabed by Oscarsborg fortress.  They had sailed over it and perhaps the dead bodies were still there.  The skies turned dark, but not by much, for it was Midsummer Night, and then it happened, what he was waiting for.  The little boat from the town of Horten appeared from behind an island and chugged across the fjord in a wide arc.  The noise from the Vistula's engine went quiet until he could barely hear its thrumming, and the spray from the bows ceased.  The Vistula glided through the water, waiting, and Arvid waited too.  The little boat approached and turned until it was in line with the ship.  Arvid could see the skipper at the helm and his white cap, and a couple were standing on the deck with a suitcase between them.  The man was holding his hat and the woman was looking straight down.   

--From Echoland, Per Petterson's debut novel, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Vintage/Penguin Random House UK, London, 2017).  First published in Norwegian as Ekkoland (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 1989).  First published in English by Harvill Secker (2016).

Someone gives a little cough and says: "I don't think there's anyone there yet.  It's probably too early."

     I know that voice, it's the lady from the kiosk next door.  I have known it for years.  She is right behind me.  I could pick her out with my eyes shut in the middle of Aker Brugge on a crowded Saturday afternoon in June.  I've been buying Petterøe 3 tobacco and Dagbladet and a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar from her since 1981.  And then I remember.  I do not work here any more.  I haven't worked here for three years.  

--From In the Wake, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006).  A paperback version of In the Wake was published by Picador (2007).  First published in Norwegian as I kjølvannet (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 2000).  

A short memoir, a collection of essays, and three novels

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We had moved to Cairo in October, 2011, during the first year of the Arab Spring.  We lived in Zamalek, a neighborhood on a long, thin island in the Nile River.  Zamalek has traditionally been home to middle- and upper-class Cairenes, and we rented an apartment on the ground floor of an old building that, like many structures on our street, was beautiful but fading.  Out in front of the Art Deco façade, the bars of a wrought-iron fence were shaped like spiderwebs.  
--From "Morsi the Cat," a personal history by Peter Hessler, The New Yorker (May 7, 2018), pp. 22-28.  (The online version appears with the title "Cairo: A Type of Love Story.") 

Though there's an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age.  The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you'll acquire a guest room.
--From "Company Man," the first essay in Calypso, a collection by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). 

All this happened quite a few years ago.  My mother had been unwell for some time.  To put a stop to my brothers' nagging and my father's especially, she finally went to see the doctor she always saw, the doctor my family had used since the dawn of time. . . . When [the results] finally arrived, three weeks later rather than two, it turned out that she had stomach cancer.  Her first reaction was as follows: Good Lord, here I've been lying awake night after night, year after year, especially when the children were small, terrified of dying from lung cancer, and then I get cancer of the stomach.  What a waste of time!    
--From I Curse the River of Time, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson (Graywolf Press, 2010).  First published in Norwegian as Jeg forbanner tidens elv (Oktober Forlag, Oslo, Norway, 2008). 

I was thirteen years old and about to start the seventh class at Veitvet School.  My mother said she would go with me on the first day--we were new to the area, and anyway she had no job--but I didn't want her to.  
--From It's Fine By Me, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Graywolf Press, 2012/Picador, 2013).  First published in Norway by Forlaget Oktober, 1992, and in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, a division of Random House Group Ltd, London.   

Oki was alone in the observation car [of the Kyoto express].  Slouched deep in his armchair, he watched the end chair turn.  Not that it kept turning in the same direction, at the same speed: sometimes it went a little faster, or a little slower, or even stopped and began turning in the opposite direction.  To look at that one revolving chair, wheeling before him in the empty car, made him feel lonely.  Thoughts of the past began flickering through his mind.
       It was the twenty-ninth of December.  Oki was going to Kyoto to hear the New Year's Eve bells.  
--From Beauty and Sadness, a novel by Yasunari Kawabata, translated from the Japanese by Howard S. Hibbett (Vintage International, 1996).  First published in Japanese as Utsukushisa To Kanashimi To (Chuo koronosha, Tokyo, Japan, 1961).  First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf (1975). 

Postcard fiction, three poems, and a novel

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My Dad dropped me off in the car and went outside, talking on the phone with my mother.  They are fighting (L !!!!!!!).  Three reasons they're fighting: . . . 
--From "My Daughter's Diary Entry," postcard fiction by Margarita Meklina, First Class Literary Magazine (August 11, 2015).

pressed full-length against the screen unzipping it
for a better grip to help him help himself to the seed and the suet
slung high under the eave . . .
--From "Bear," a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt, The New Yorker (November 26, 2012), p. 61.

We lived next to an all-boys' high school. 
My uncles wore its uniform before
they put on army fatigues.  I built
toad temples with crushed dandelions and dirt
and the schoolboys kicked them apart . . .  
--From "Raising Children," a poem by Sue Hyon Bae, Spires, Volume 21, Issue 1 (Spring 2011), p. 18.

The announcement arrived during dinner 
and we thought we would have to miss our evening tv shows
but our cab driver, bless his reckless heart, 
had his GPS rigged to our weeklies. . . 
--From "A Distant Relative's Wake," a poem by Sue Hyon Bae, Spires, Volume 20, Issue 2 (Fall 2010), pp. 31-32.

When I was a little girl of six or seven I was always scared when we passed the lions on our way out of town.  I was sure Lucifer felt as I did, for he always put on speed at that very place, and I did not realize until much later it was because my grandfather whipped him up sharply on the way down the gentle slope past the gateway where the lions were, and that was because Grandfather was an impatient man.  It was a well-known fact. 
        The lions were yellow and I sat at the rear of the trap dangling my legs, alone or with my brother Jesper, with my back towards Grandfather, watching the lions diminishing up there.  They turned their heads and stared at me with their yellow eyes.  They were made of stone, as were the plinths they lay on, but all the same their staring made my chest burn and gave me a hollow feeling inside.  I could not take my eyes off them.  Each time I tried to look down at the graveled road instead, I turned dizzy and felt I was falling.
        "They're coming!  They're coming!" shouted my brother, who knew all about those lions, and I looked up again and saw them coming.  They tore themselves free of the stone blocks and grew larger, and I jumped off the trap heedless of the speed, grazed my knees on the gravel and ran out into the nearest field.  There were roe deer and stags in the forest beyond the field, and I thought about that as I ran.  
        "Can't you leave the lass alone!" bellowed my grandfather. . . . 
--From To Siberia [Til Sibir], a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Graywolf Press, 2008; Picador 2009).

A novel by Per Petterson, stories by Alice Munro and Amy Hempel, and a memoir by Mary Karr

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Early November.  It's nine o'clock.  The titmice are banging against the window.  Sometimes they fly dizzily off after the impact, other times they fall and lie struggling in the new snow until they can take off again.  I don't know what they want that I have.  
--From Out Stealing Horses, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Picador, 2008; Copyright 2003/English translation 2005; first published in the United States by Graywolf Press).

Muriel Snow had not been Millicent's first choice for best friend.  In the early days of her marriage she had set her sights high.  Mrs. Lawyer Nesbitt.  Mrs. Dr. Finnegan.  Mrs. Doud.  They let her take on a donkey's load of work in the Women's Auxiliary at the church, but they never asked her to their tea parties.  She was never inside their houses, unless it was to a meeting.  Porter was a farmer.  No matter how many farms he owned, a farmer.  She should have known.  
--From "A Real Life," a short story by Alice Munro, first published as "A Form of Marriage" in The New Yorker and reprinted in Open Secrets (Knopf, 1994), pp. 52-80.

On the last night of the marriage, my husband and I went to the ballet.  We sat behind a blind man; his guide dog, in harness, lay beside him in the aisle of the theater.  I could not keep my attention on the performance; instead, I watched the guide dog watch the performance.  Throughout the evening, the dog's head moved, following the dancers across the stage.  Every so often the dog would whimper slightly.  "Because he can hear high notes we can't?" my husband said.  "No," I said, "because he was disappointed in the choreography."
--From "The Dog of the Marriage," a short story in four parts by Amy Hempel, from her collection The Dog of the Marriage: Stories (Scribner, 2005), pp. 59-83.  Part 1 was published as "Now I Can See the Moon" in Elle, and Part 4 was first published in The Mississippi Review.   

I knew that neither of my parents was coming.  Daddy was working the graveyard shift, and the sheriff said that his deputy had driven out to the plant to try and track him down.  Mother had been taken Away--he further told us--for being Nervous.   
--From The Liars' Club, a memoir by Mary Karr (Penguin, 1995).