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).

Two stories from Granta and a novel by Ha Jin

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I gave up heroin and went home and began the methadone treatment administered at the outpatient clinic and I didn't have much else to do except get up each morning and watch TV and try to sleep at night, but I couldn't, something made me unable to close my eyes and rest, and that was my routine, until one day I couldn't stand it any more and I bought myself a pair of black swimming trunks at a store in the centre of town and I went to the beach, wearing the trunks and with a towel and a magazine, and I spread my towel not too far from the water and then I lay down and spent a while trying to decide whether to go into the water or not . . .  
--From "Beach," a short story by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, Granta, Number 114 (July 18, 2011). 

Some time ago, when my husband went to stay at the American Academy in Rome in order to do research, I accompanied him because I had never seen the Roman Forum.  I had a book Harold had given me for my birthday that showed how the ruins looked in the present day, and each page also had its own transparent sheet with drawings that filled in what was missing, or completed the fragments that remained, so you could see what the scene had looked like in ancient times. . . .  At dinner, our first night there, we were introduced to other visitors, and here is where the story starts: they were the parents of a young man to whom our daughter, Angela, had briefly been engaged at the end of her senior year at Yale--so briefly that I had never met his parents, though Harold and Donald Stipley had a passing acquaintance.  
--From "Lavande," a short story by Ann Beattie, Granta, Number 94 (December 10, 2008).   

Finally Taotao got his passport and visa.  For weeks his parents had feared that China, even if not closing the door outright, would restrict the outflow of people.  After the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989, all the American airlines except United had canceled their flights to Beijing and Shanghai.  At the good news, Pingping burst into tears.  She quickly rinsed the colander in which she had drained the shredded turnip for her jellyfish salad, took off her apron, and set out with her husband, Nan Wu, for the town center of Woodland, where the office of Travel International was located.
--From A Free Life, a novel by Ha Jin (Pantheon Books, 2007). 

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

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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).  

The Spring 2015 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2015 issue of the journal features poetry by Renee Emerson, Kevin Miller, Kevin McLellan, Theodore Worozbyt, Jessica de Koninck, Daryl Farmer, P M F Johnson, Aaron Bauer, and Hal Sirowitz; an essay by Gail Peck; short fiction by Robert Radin; and a self-portrait by cover artist Zinaida Serebriakova.

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.

Wild Tales (A collection of six shorter films written and directed by Damián Szifron)

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Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes), in Spanish with English subtitles, written and directed by Damián Szifron, produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Pedro Almodóvar.  Everything about this collection was outstanding: the writing, direction, cinematography, acting, pacing, and the order of the pieces. 

The film is set in Argentina and has an excellent ensemble cast.  The actors included María Marull in “Pasternak,” Rita Cortese and Julieta Zylberberg as the cook and waitress in “Las Ratas,” Leonardo Sbaraglia and Walter Donado as the drivers in “El más fuerte” (“The Strongest”), Ricardo Darín as the engineer in “Bombita,” Oscar Martínez as Mauricio in “La propuesta” (“The Proposal”), and Erica Rivas and Diego Gentile as Romina and Ariel in “Hasta que la muerte nos separe” ("Until death do us part").  

Wild Tales has been nominated for a long list of awards including an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  It won numerous audience awards at film festivals in the United States and abroad, and it won Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor/Actress, and Best Supporting Actor from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina. 

   

A story by Austin Bunn, poem by Maxine Scates, and novel by Ha Jin

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. . . The papers arrived from the lawyer yesterday.  Soon I will be officially divorced from Scott.  I'm selling what I can. 
          "You have to come with me to the doctor," my mother says.
          But I have buyers coming.  I'm expecting to get money for my past life.  The pleasures of subtraction, of seeing things go. . . .  
--From "Everything, All at Once," a short story by Austin Bunn, first published in The Sun, Issue 390 (June 2008).  Reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXIV (2010), pp. 414-424.

. . .   The jets 
are screaming overhead and in the intervals 
after they pass the neighbors are arguing again
and it doesn't matter which house because they all do: 
Big John and his nameless wife, Julia and Ted, 
The Smiths, Rosie and Bob, or Lynne and Jack, 
the ex-Hell's Angels who have settled down 
with their four kids.  They all pretend they can't hear
what the next is yelling but I'm the one who hears
nothing.  My mother is sleeping and my father 
has left for good . . .   
--From "Not There," a poem by Maxine Scates, first published in The American Poetry Review, Volume 37, Issue 4 (July/August 2008), p. 44.  Reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXIV (2010), pp. 226-227.

Shao Bin felt sick of Dismount Fort, a commune town where he had lived for over six years.  His wife, Meilan, complained that she had to walk two miles to wash clothes on weekends.  She couldn't pedal, so Bin was supposed to take her on the carrier of his bicycle to the Blue Brook.  But this month he worked weekends in the Harvest Fertilizer Plant and couldn't help her.  If only they had lived in Workers' Park, the plant's apartment compound, which was just hundreds of paces away from the waterside. . . .  
--From In the Pond, a novel by Ha Jin (Vintage, 2000).

Miranda July and Raymond Carver

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I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching--windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel.  When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward.  Who is she? people might have been wondering.  Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda?  I strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing 12 with a casual, fun-loving finger.  The kind of finger that was up for anything.  
--from The First Bad Man, a novel by Miranda July (Scribner, 2015).  The book is also for sale in The First Bad Man Store, where items mentioned in the novel were auctioned off, with proceeds going to The National Partnership for Women and Families.

THE ESSENCE OF RED

$159.48

SOLD!

“Dr. Broyard rattled open a drawer full of tiny glass bottles and picked one labeled red. I squinted at the perfectly clear liquid. It reminded me a lot of water.

'It’s the essence of red,' he said brusquely. He could sense my skepticism." 

—The First Bad Man, page 3 

Packaged with excerpt; authenticity verified with Miranda July’s signature. 

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Earl Ober was between jobs as a salesman.  But Doreen, his wife, had gone to work nights as a waitress at a twenty-four-hour coffee shop at the edge of town.  One night, when he was drinking, Earl decided to stop by the coffee shop and have something to eat.  He wanted to see where Doreen worked, and he wanted to see if he could order something on the house. 
--From "They're Not Your Husband," a short story by Raymond Carver, first published in the Chicago Review, Volume 24, Number 4 (Spring 1973) and reprinted in his collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (McGraw-Hill, 1976).  The story appears on pages 22-30 in the Vintage edition from 1992.