The Spring 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review

~
The Spring 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short fiction by Marianna Vitale (translated from the Italian by Laura Venita Green), Nico Montoya, Anita Harag (translated from the Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess), Sohana Manzoor, and Kristian Radford; a lyric essay by Amy Ash; poetry in prose by Yves Bonnefoy (translated from the French by Hoyt Rogers); poetry by Ashish Kumar Singh, Susan Johnson, Laura Goldin, George HS Singer, and Liza Moore; and a cover image by Tunisian photographer Houcine Ncib. 

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com. 

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

 ~
The dark hallway smelled of fear, so I was afraid that Mrs Olfertsen would notice it, as if I'd brought the smell with me. My body and my movements became stiff and awkward as I stood listening to her fluttering voice explaining many things and, in between the explanations, running on like an empty spool that babbled about nothing in an uninterrupted stream – about the weather, about the boy, about how tall I was for my age. She asked whether I had an apron with me, and I took my mother's out of the emptied school bag. There was a hole near the seam because there was something or other wrong with everything that my mother was responsible for, and I was touched by the sight of it. My mother was far away and I wouldn't see her for eight hours. I was among strangers – I was someone whose physical strength they'd bought for a certain number of hours each day for a certain payment. They didn't care about the rest of me. When we went out to the kitchen, Toni, the little boy, came running up in his pajamas. 'Good morning, Mummy,' he said sweetly, leaning against his mother's legs and giving me a hostile look. The woman gently pulled herself free from him and said, 'This is Tove, say hello to the nice lady.' Reluctantly he put out his hand and when I took it, he said threateningly, 'You have to do everything I say or else I'll shoot you.' His mother laughed loudly and showed me a tray with cups and a teapot, and asked me to fix the tea and come into the living room with it.
—From Youth, chapter 1, by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally. This segment is on pages 103-104 of the American hardcover version of The Copenhagen Trilogy.  

The Copenhagen Trilogy is a compilation of three shorter books by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (Penguin Random House in Great Britain, 2020, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States, 2021). Childhood and Youth were first published in Copenhagen, Denmark, as Barndom and Ungdom (Gyldendal, 1967). Dependency was first published in Copenhagen as Gift (Gyldendal, 1971).

The New York Times included The Copenhagen Trilogy on its list of the ten best books of 2021, writing that "Ditlevsen's gorgeous memoirs, first published in Denmark in the 1960s and '70s and collected here in a single volume, detail her hardscrabble upbringing, career path and merciless addictions: a powerful account of the struggle to reconcile art and life. She joined the working ranks at 14, became a renowned poet by her early 20s, and found herself, after two failed marriages, wedded to a psychopathic doctor and hopelessly dependent on opioids by her 30s. Yet for all the dramatic twists of her life, these books together project a stunning clarity, humor and candidness, casting light not just on the world's harsh realities but on the inexplicable impulses of our secret selves." A full review of the book, by Megan O'Grady, appeared in the New York Times on January 26, 2021.

"Before Rehab," an astonishing excerpt from Dependency, written by Tove Ditlevsen and translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman (credited as Michael Goldman), appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of the Apple Valley Review. This excerpt, Chapter 5 of Dependency, is on pages 341-348 of the hardcover edition of The Copenhagen Trilogy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).

In an essay in The New Yorker, Hilton Als wrote that "Dependency strikes me as an inspired title for this volume, which is called Gift in Danish—a word that can mean 'marriage' or 'poison.' Ditlevsen has a dependency not only on Demerol but on the question of what it means to be a wife while also a lovesick daughter and an artist." The essay, "Tove Ditlevsen's Art of Estrangement," appeared in the Books section of The New Yorker in the issue for February 15 & 22, 2021.

Als also said, "Don’t think yourself odd if, after reading the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen's romantic, spiritually macabre, and ultimately devastating collection of memoirs . . . you spend hours, if not days, in a reverie of alienation." No comment about that. 

In my opinion, The Copenhagen Trilogy is even more phenomenal when paired with the unabridged audiobook from Macmillan Audio. I recently read the book again, in addition to listening to the audiobook, and the narration by Stine Wintlev brings the book to life in a new way. The audiobook is available directly from Macmillan Audio as well as from OverDrive, Audible, Spotify, SoundCloud, and elsewhere.

THE COPENHAGEN TRILOGY

Childhood, Youth, Dependency

By Tove Ditlevsen

Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Available online from Macmillan in hardcover, trade paperback, e-book, and digital audio 

Fiction by Graham Greene, Miriam Cohen, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Jonas Eika, and a collection of cityscapes by Paul Madonna

~
Scobie took a Mende grammar from the bookcase: it was tucked away in the bottom shelf where its old untidy cover was least conspicuous. In the upper shelves were the flimsy rows of Louise's authors—not-quite-so-young modern poets and the novels of Virginia Woolf. He couldn't concentrate: it was too hot and his wife's absence was like a garrulous companion in the room reminding him of his responsibility. A fork fell on the floor and he watched Ali surreptitiously wipe it on his sleeve, watched him with affection: they had been together fifteen years—a year longer than his marriage—a long time to keep a servant. He had been "small boy" first, then assistant steward in the days when one kept four servants, now he was plain steward. After each leave Ali would be on the landing-stage waiting to organize his luggage with three or four ragged carriers. In the intervals of leave many people tried to steal Ali's services, but he had never yet failed to be waiting—except once when he had been in prison. There was no disgrace about prison; it was an obstacle that no one could avoid for ever.
—From The Heart of the Matter, a novel by Graham Greene (William Heinemann in London/The Viking Press in the United States, 1948). I was listening to an unabridged audiobook version narrated by Joseph Porter (Blackstone Publishing, 2011). Please note: this book contains some racist language that will be considered offensive now. The Heart of the Matter is set in Sierra Leone during World War II and was first published in 1948. 

Yael's parents ask if she has any questions, and she does, but she suspects they aren't the right ones. She wants to know if she will have two toothbrushes now, or if she will bring the same one back and forth, its bristles wrapped in shredding tissue to keep from getting germy. Also, she is curious about when a divorce starts: if it happens all at once, or in stages, the way people are engaged for a while before they are married. She wants to ask if later on that night they will have dinner together, or if the divorce has made that, today, impossible.
—From "Bad Words," a short story by Miriam Cohen, from her collection Adults and Other Children (Ig Publishing, 2020). This story appears on pages 31-45.  

Clover was back in the room, the baby flung over one shoulder. She was wearing an old Cramps T-shirt she liked to sleep in and nothing else. I might have found this sexy to one degree or another but for the fact that I wasn't at my best in the morning and I'd seen her naked save for one rock-and-roll memento T-shirt for something like a thousand consecutive mornings now. "It's six-fifteen," she said. I said nothing. My eyes eased shut. I heard her at the closet, and in the dream that crashed down on me in that instant she metamorphosed from a rippling human female with a baby slung over her shoulder to a great shining bird springing from the brink of a precipice and sailing on great shining wings into the void. I woke to the baby. On the bed. Beside me. "You change her," my wife said. "You feed her. I'm late as it is."
—From "The Lie," a short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle, The New Yorker (April 14, 2008). Stephen Colbert read this story for Selected Shorts, and it is included in Selected Shorts: Even More Laughs. The compilation, which is available in various locations such as Audible and OverDrive, also includes "The Spray" by Jonathan Lethem, "The Swim Team" by Miranda July, and other stories.

I arrived in Copenhagen sweaty and halfway out of myself after an extremely fictional flight. Frankly, I would use that word for any air travel, but on this trip I had, shortly after takeoff, fallen into a light feverish daze in which I relived a series of flights I had taken earlier in my life.
—From "Alvin," a short story by Jonas Eika, translated from the Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg, The New Yorker (April 19, 2021), pp. 52-59. 

"This new guy I'm dating is driving me crazy. His reply to everything is, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous for that.'"
          "Uh. I know what you mean. I dated a guy who did the same thing. And it would always be to the most ridiculous stuff, like, you'd say, 'I hate when people leave the cap off the toothpaste.' And he'd say, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous for that.'"
          "Ha! That's Jeffrey to a T! As if anyone could be famous for something so stupid. I mean, who's he famous to anyway?"
          "Wait a minute—Jeffrey? He wouldn't happen to work at a trattoria on Stockton Street?"
          "Yeah, how did you—"
          "Wow."
          "No kidding. I guess he is famous for something."
—From Everything Is Its Own Reward: An All Over Coffee Collection, a large collection of meticulous pen and ink cityscapes and thoughts from the weekly San Francisco Chronicle series "All Over Coffee" by Paul Madonna (City Lights Books, 2011). This is his second collection of work from the newspaper. My favorite panels from this book were on pages 75, 82, 103, and 207. The excerpt quoted here is from page 75.

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

~
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). 

Collections of literature on migraine, poetry by Arab women, essays by Ashley Marie Farmer, and short stories by Sindya Bhanoo

~
We're driving through South Dakota when I see the tall grass on the side of the road turn liquid. Then the plains come alive: They breathe and relax, breathe and relax. We could be in a boat on a golden ocean for all the dipping and swaying. After a while, the horizon flickers and sends up a filmy light. The air itself is viscous, moved by wind, distorting the landscape. 
—From "The Lightning in My Eyes," an essay by Jean Hanson, from So Much More Than a Headache: Understanding Migraine through Literature (The Kent State University Press, 2020), a collection edited by Kathleen J. O'Shea. This essay appeared on pages 30-35.

After a supper of roasted lamb and eggplant, 
fish baked with tahini and lemon,
Mother offers everyone demitasse.
She places the small gold cups 
just so on the Quaker lace.
—From "The World Is a Wedding," a poem by Adele Ne Jame, from The Poetry of Arab Women (Interlink Books, 2001), a collection edited by Nathalie Handal. This poem appeared on pages 241-242. "The World Is a Wedding" was originally published in a collection of Adele Ne Jame's poetry, Field Work (Petronium Press, 1996).

On January 19, 2014, my grandfather Bill walked into my grandmother Frances's hospital room with a loaded gun he'd purchased that morning. He set their Neptune Society cards side by side on a nearby table and kissed his sleeping wife of sixty-three years. Then he shot her once in a the chest. He tried to shoot himself, too, but a spring popped from the pawn shop gun and the weapon broke apart in his hands. . . . 
          See, two weeks before my grandfather bought the gun, my grandmother tripped as she walked across their living room. It was a swift accident on an ordinary day . . .
—From Dear Damage, a collection of essays by Ashley Marie Farmer (Sarabande Books, 2022). These two segments appear on pages 3 and 6 and are from the first essay, "Mercy." 

I held his hand until the ambulance arrived. It was the first time that I had held a man's hand since my husband died. The rectangular diamond on Mr. Swaminathan's gold ring was hard and cold in contrast to his warm skin. Before they loaded his body onto the gurney, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "Renuka." Then he squeezed my hand. Whether he was asking me to summon his wife, or whether he thought I was his wife, I cannot say. He died before he reached the hospital. He was seventy-five years old, the same age my husband would be if he were alive today.
—From Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, a collection of short stories by Sindya Bhanoo (Catapult, 2022). This section is from the first story, "Malliga Homes," which was first published in Granta. It was the winner of the Disquiet Prize for Fiction 2020 and was selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize.

I was at the college for an author talk on a novel based on local history. A few dozen people attended and most of us headed afterward to a refreshment table loaded with desserts prepared by students in the culinary school. I put slices of pound cake and chocolate cake on a paper plate and I stood at a small table that supported my cup of water as I ate. If the cake hadn't looked so delicious I'd have bolted after the writer's last word because I'd seen Mr. and Mrs. Y in the audience and feared she'd buttonhole me. Mrs. Y and I were former colleagues and we hadn't seen each other in almost a year.
—From "Buttonhole," a story by Glen Pourciau, New World Writing Quarterly (October 5, 2022).  

The Fall 2022 issue of the Apple Valley Review

~
The Fall 2022 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short fiction by Emmanuel Nwafor, K. A. Polzin, Conor Barnes, and Magda Bartkowska; creative nonfiction by Yuko Iida Frost; poetry by Eric Braude, Tina Blade, Miriam Levine, Paul Dickey, Devon Brock, Hedy Habra, and Matthew Johnson; and cover artwork by Japanese woodblock printmaker Hasui Kawase. 

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.