A novel by Paul Murray, a poem by Diane Seuss, short stories by Jess Walter, and memoirs by Stephanie Foo and Frank McCourt

~
She didn't want to devalue her mother in Elaine's eyes. At the same time, she didn't know how Elaine could think Imelda had mystique. To spend time with her mother was to get a running commentary on the contents of her mind – an incessant barrage of thoughts and sub-thoughts and random observations, each in itself insignificant but cumulatively overwhelming. I must book you in for electrolysis for that little moustache you're getting, she'd say; and then while you were still reeling, Are those tulips or begonias? There's Marie Devlin, do you know she has no sense of style, none whatsoever. Is that man an Arab? This place is filling up with Arabs. Where's this I saw they had that nice chutney? Kay Connor told me Anne Smith's lost weight but the doctor said it was the wrong kind. I thought it was supposed to be sunny today, that's not one bit sunny. Who invented chutney, was it Gorbachev? And on, and on – listening to her was like walking through a blizzard, a storm of frenzied white nothings that left you snow-blind.
—From The Bee Sting, a novel by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). This segment is from page 7 of the hardcover. 

I’d just brushed the dog, there on the dog's couch.
I was wearing a black—well, to call it a gown is a criminal
overstatement—a black rag. 
—From "Gertrude Stein," a poem by Diane Seuss, The New Yorker (August 16, 2021), p. 52.

Another time, when I went into a bar near my apartment to pick him up, he raised his glass as I approached. "Another one of these," he said. I could see he had no idea who I was. 
          "Dad? I'm not the bartender. It's Jay. Your son." 
          He stared at me. He was quiet a moment. Then: "Why don't you ever bring girlfriends home?"
          So. This was to be our Sisyphean hell—me coming out to my fading father every day for the rest of his life.
—From The Angel of Rome, a collection of short stories by Jess Walter (HarperCollins, 2022). My favorites were probably "Mr. Voice" (first published in Tin House and then in Best American Short Stories 2015) and the story excerpted above, "Town & Country," which appeared on pages 149-174 in the hardcover (from Scribd Originals, 2020).

My troop leader pulled out her guitar . . . As we sang, all the mothers became misty-eyed, stroking their daughters' hair, kissing the tops of their heads. The other girls leaned into their embraces. My mother did not touch me but stood alone and wept loudly. She cried all the time in the privacy of our home—ugly, bent-in-half sobs—but she never fell apart in public, and the sight alarmed me.
—From What My Bones Know, a memoir by Stephanie Foo (Ballantine Books, 2022). There is also an unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author (Random House Audio). A short excerpt from the book and a sample of the audiobook are available at the link above.

Bonus book to read again: 

My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone. 
—From Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner, 1996). If you have the option, I highly recommend listening to the unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author. He was an excellent speaker, and the audiobook really captures that. 

The Fall 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review

~
The Fall 2023 issue of the Apple Valley Review features flash fiction by Jackie Sabbagh and Scott F. Gandert; a short story by J. Malcolm Garcia; a novel excerpt by Philippe Forest (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer); a memoir excerpt by Dato Turashvili (translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs with Lia Shartava and Elizabeth Scott Tervo); poetry by Mickie Kennedy, Eric Roy, Nadja Küchenmeister (translated from the German by Aimee Chor), Vernon Mukumbi, Marty Krasney, Megan Willburn, Theodora Ziolkowski, and Lynne Knight; and cover artwork by German painter Karl Friedrich Lessing.

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.

Novels by Jhumpa Lahiri and Francesca Ekwuyasi, short stories by Polly Rosenwaike, and memoir by Abigail Thomas

~
East of the Tolly Club, after Deshapran Sashmal Road splits in two, there is a small mosque. A turn leads to a quiet enclave. A warren of narrow lanes and modest middle-class homes.  
—From The Lowland, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013; paperback Vintage, 2014). 

She came back down a few hours later to buy gum from the 7-Eleven down the street. As she was heading out the door, Jasmine waved her notebook. "I guess I could share the field notes I wrote about you today."
          Leah was suddenly nervous about what this undersized investigator might have to say about her disheveled appearance. But she believed in empirical evidence. "Sure, if you want." 
          Jasmine read from the notebook. "She is wearing a blue-and-green-striped shirt. I want a shirt like that. She is wearing jeans with a hole in one knee. She is wearing muddy shoes. It's raining so why didn't she wear boots? Maybe she is sick today because she looks white. I mean whiter than normal. I hope she feels better." Jasmine closed the notebook. "I might do a sketch later."  
—From Look How Happy I'm Making You, a collection of short stories about pregnancy and new motherhood by Polly Rosenwaike (Doubleday, 2019). This section is from "Field Notes," which appears on pages 16-30 in the hardcover and which was first published as "Laboratory on the Moon" in WomenArts Quarterly Journal (Summer 2013). 

Later he built her a special platform so she could knead her bread more comfortably, with no strain on her back. She loved to bake, and he loved her anadama bread. His eyes would close when he put a piece in his mouth and stay closed while he ate. They had a big window installed in the kitchen that looked into the woods. In the fall afternoons she used to watch them empty of their light like a glass of bourbon slowly being filled to the brim. 
—From Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, a book by Abigail Thomas (hardcover Alfred A. Knopf, 2000; paperback Anchor Books, 2001). This segment is from "Chaos," pages 62-63 in the paperback. (Anne Lamott's blurb referred to this book as "Not so much memoir as a stained-glass window of scenes garnered from a life," which I think is an excellent description of it.) 

I live in a cozy house with pretty furniture. Time passes here. There is a fireplace and two acres and the dogs run around and dig big holes and I don't care. . . . Rich is lodged in a single moment and it never tips into the next. Last week I lay on his bed in the nursing home and watched him. I was out of his field of vision and I think he forgot I was there.
—From A Three Dog Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Harcourt, 2006). This is from the beginning of the opening essay, "What Stays the Same."

By the time Taiye had rubbed oil into her skin and pulled on a longsleeved linen kaftan, the cakes were done, and her mother was awake. Taiye found Kambirinachi sitting on the kitchen counter, with a vacant smile on her face as she stirred milk into a white mug filled with hot cocoa. Coca-Cola was on the floor, batting at her swinging legs.
          “Mami, good morning.” Taiye smiled and kissed her mother’s warm forehead.
—From Butter Honey Pig Bread, a debut novel by Francesca Ekwuyasi (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). I did not read this book; I listened to an audiobook version narrated by Amaka Umeh (Bespeak Audio Editions, 2021). 

Short fiction by Tove Ditlevsen and Hiroko Oyamada, and novels by María José Ferrada, Alina Bronsky, and Elisa Shua Dusapin

~
She closed her eyes and heard Hanne's voice from the kitchen. She was sitting drinking coffee with the children, fresh and in good moods, while the record player from her son's bedroom babbled some vacuous pop melody. All day long there was a cacophony around this difficult young woman, whom Helene was constantly on the brink of firing, though it hadn't amounted to anything yet. 
—From The Trouble with Happiness, a collection of short stories by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman. This book was originally published in Danish as Paraplyen (The Umbrella) and Den onde lykke (The Trouble with Happiness) (Hasselbalch: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1952 and 1963). The English translation was first published in Great Britain by Penguin Random House (2022) and in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2022). The collection is also available as an audiobook, narrated by Stine Wintlev, from Macmillan Audio.

This segment is from my favorite story in the collection, "The Little Shoes" (pp. 142-152 in the hardcover). It was first published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review. 

My other favorite, "The Knife," was first published in English in the Fall 2020 issue of the Apple Valley Review. This was the last issue of the journal published in our original format. "The Knife" appears on pages 95-103 of the hardcover version of The Trouble with Happiness. 

Ramón climbed up the Coca-Cola billboard near the highway one Monday. That evening, as the sun was disappearing behind the hills that surround the housing complex, he decided he would stay. Even though it was late, the air was still warm. It was a heat that seemed even drier in this patch of the city, which had missed out on its share of pavement and trees because there had not been enough to spare.
—From How to Turn into a Bird, a novel by María José Ferrada, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer (Tin House, 2022). This book was previously published as El hombre del cartel (2021).

In Germany, Grandmother took me to the pediatrician. Actually, she explained to me on the way, this was the real reason for our emigration: to finally be able to take me to an upstanding doctor for treatment, one who could give hope to me—and more importantly, to her—that I might survive into adulthood, even if it meant Grandmother would have a millstone around her neck for decades.
—From My Grandmother's Braid, a novel by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2021). This book was originally published in German as Der Zopf meiner Großmutter (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Köln, Germany, 2019). 

I arrive at my grandparents' place to find my grandmother seated on the floor in the living room surrounded by her Playmobil figures. She's removed all their hair. They smile vacantly.
—From The Pachinko Parlor, a novel by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter, 2022). This book was originally published in French as Les Billes du Pachinko (Éditions Zoé, 2018). First published in the UK by Daunt Books Publishing (2022). 

When we got to Urabe's place, the old shop sign was still up over the door: WORLD OF WATER—RARE AND EXOTIC FISH. It was too dark to see anything through the window. There was some kind of plastic sheet hanging up on the other side of the glass. Saiki pushed the button on the intercom, then we went around the side and up the stairs to Urabe's apartment. 
—From Weasels in the Attic, a short book containing three linked stories by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (New Directions, 2022). This segment is from the first story, "Death in the Family," on p. 5 of the paperback. The stories in Weasels in the Attic were originally published by Shinchosa Publishing Co., Tokyo, in 2012, 2013, and 2014. 

An essay by Devon Geyelin, novels by Yūko Tsushima and Amy Tan, a memoir by Amy Bloom, and a poem by Jane Hirshfield

~
I first wrote this while I sat in bed in the months after, once he wasn't there anymore and I was upset. Initially it was very long, maybe a hundred pages, or more than that. It had a part where we were friends, and a part where we dated, and a part where we stopped, and then the attack. 
—From "Friendship," an essay by Devon Geyelin, The Paris Review (online July 25, 2023). 

The apartment had windows on all sides.
          I spent a year there, with my little daughter, on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. We had the whole fourth floor to ourselves, plus the rooftop terrace. At street level there was a camera shop; the second and third floors were both divided into two rented offices.
—From Territory of Light, a short, atmospheric novel by Yuko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). (Note: If you are looking for this book or others by the same author, her name in English is alternately stylized as Yuko Tsushima and Yūko Tsushima.) The English translation was previously published in Great Britain (Penguin Books Ltd., 2018), and this quote is from a paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2019. An unabridged audiobook version of the English translation, narrated by Rina Takasaki, is also available (Macmillan Audio, 2019). 

Territory of Light was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzō (July 1978-June 1979). The story takes place over the course of a year, and the release of the twelve chapters marked the months in real time. It was then published in book form in Japan as Hikari no Ryōbun (Kodansha Ltd., 1979). 

Helen thinks all her decisions are always right, but really, she is only lucky. For over fifty years I have seen this happen, how her foolish thinking turns into good fortune. It was like that at lunch yesterday. "Winnie-ah," she said. "Have more chicken." I told Helen I did not want to eat any more funeral leftovers—five days was enough. So we went shopping at Happy Super, deciding what new things to eat for last night's dinner.
          Helen picked out a flat fish, pom-pom fish, she called it, only a dollar sixty-nine a pound, bargain bin. 
          And I said, "This kind of bargain you don't want. Look at his eye, shrunken in and cloudy-looking. That fish is already three days old."
          But Helen stared at that fish eye and said she saw nothing wrong. So I picked up that fish and felt its body slide between my fingers, a fish that had slipped away from life long time ago. Helen said it was a good sign—a juicy, tender fish!
          . . .
          She bought that three-day-old fish, the dinner I ate at her house last night. . . . 
          I tell you, that fish made me so mad. It was sweet. It was tender. Only one dollar sixty-nine a pound. I started to think, Maybe Helen went back to Happy Super and exchanged that fish. But then I thought, Helen is not that clever. And that's when I remembered something. Even though Helen is not smart, even though she was born poor, even though she has never been pretty, she has always had luck pour onto her plate, even spill from the mouth of a three-day-old fish. 
—From The Kitchen God's Wife, a novel by Amy Tan (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1991). The section above is from the beginning of chapter 3, pages 67-68 of the mass market paperback (Ivy Books/Ballantine Books/Random House, 1992). The novel was reissued by Penguin in 2006.

When we moved to a small Connecticut village in 2014, Brian was invited to join a men's book club. He was dubious because they seemed to prefer nonfiction and he did not, but he was pleased to be asked and he went regularly. He suggested a novel whenever it was his turn to suggest. They asked him why he wanted to be in their book club and he said, I love a good read and I love intimacy. He was pleased that they looked shocked, and he felt that he'd announced himself properly. 
—From In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom (Random House, 2022). This segment appears on page 15 of the hardcover. The audiobook version, available from Random House Audio, features Amy Bloom reading the book herself. 

In Amy Bloom's memoir, she quotes the last line from "Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World," a poem by Jane Hirshfield, which begins with this: 

If the gods bring to you 
a strange and frightening creature, 
accept the gift 
as if it were one you had chosen.

Poetry by Aliyah Cotton and Roxanne Cardona, and short fiction by Haruki Murakami, Lucas Flatt, and Christopher Ghattas

~
For example, I puffed on my inhaler
and watched the unnamed smoke creep
under my bedroom door as the music and
the loud voices boomed down the hall.
I knew never to call 911.
—From "evidence for the necessity of my removal by child protective services," a poem by Aliyah Cotton, Rust & Moth (Spring 2023).  

That Sunday, I went to my girlfriend's house to pick her up. We went on dates pretending we were going to the library to study, so I always put various study-related items in my shoulder bag to keep up the facade. Like a novice criminal making up a flimsy alibi. 
          I rang the bell over and over, but no one answered. I paused for a while, then rang it again, repeatedly, until I finally heard someone moving slowly toward the door. It was my girlfriend's older brother. 
—From "With the Beatles," a short story from First Person Singular, a collection of eight stories by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021). The book was originally published in Tokyo, Japan, as Ichininsho Tansu (Bungei Shunju Ltd., 2020). A slightly different version of "With the Beatles" was published, with an illustration by Adrian Tomine, in The New Yorker (February 17 and 24, 2020). The excerpt above is from the hardcover book (p. 93). 

Of course, with the students, they’re mostly not dumb enough to think they’ll have writing careers, or else they've self-published fifteen sci-fi novels since they graduated high school two months ago. (That guy doesn't seem the least bit anxious; he's got deadlines to meet.) Once upon a time, I smoked pot and if I wanted to describe a flowering pocomoke crepe myrtle shimmering fuchsia in a dry ditch, I did it without looking up "flowering bushes" and wondering where all the time went.
—From "Reflections After Googling 'How to Be Less Anxious About My Writing Career' and Finding the Same Bullshit I Tell My Composition Students," fiction by Lucas Flatt, Maudlin House (June 22, 2023).  

My father says my problems are not problems. 
          What do you know? I think.
          "What do you mean?" I say.
          He turns to me. He grumbles about his car engine and his dead wife and something called a praws tate.
          "My dead mother, you mean."
—From "Plums," a piece of flash fiction by Christopher Ghattas, StreetLit (April 21, 2023). 

I am early. Take out my keys. Three women at the end of their evening's
work, in a tangle of sprawl, languish on the hood of a nearby car. 
—From "Welcome to Summer School," a poem by Roxanne Cardona, San Antonio Review (June 21, 2023).  

Short stories and flash fiction by Parker Young, novels by Barbara Kingsolver and Gabriel García Márquez, and a bonus book to read again

~
I decided to throw the chicken sandwich away but couldn't bring myself to touch it, the first step in the throwing-away process proved impossible, so I sat there while it sat there too, me in my chair, the sandwich on my plate, both of us in the kitchen listening to my wife talk or cry softly in the bedroom, where I pretended to sleep every night but couldn’t for no reason, no reason at all.
—From "Chicken Marriage Sandwich," a story by Parker Young, Always Crashing Magazine (May 22, 2022).  

In Bora Bora, crabs do the work of rodents at night, patrolling the gutters with a percussive, mechanical menace. Dogs sleep inches from the road; it looks like they've been struck down by careless drivers. I almost hit some of them myself in our rented Fiat Panda because I was attempting to learn, under [my brother-in-law] Harrison's tutelage, how to operate a manual transmission. I made the Panda lurch erratically around the road that circumvolves the island, like a model train powered by a sketchy generator, which was pretty close to the real situation mechanically, as Harrison kept trying to explain to me by repeating the story of the clutch and the drivetrain, the clutch and the drivetrain, a meaningless story, impossible to visualize, which I never even began to understand. While everyone else on the island only appeared to be driving recklessly (it was ultimately a sign of their mastery), I was actually doing it, because I had too much to think about all at once—the clutch, the gas, my error in taking this one-week job as Harrison's assistant—and it was embarrassing.  
—From "Disappearances," a story by Parker Young, from his debut collection of short fiction, Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane (Future Tense Books, 2023). I originally discovered this book via a list of new fiction, which led me to read "Chicken Marriage Sandwich," which was published in Always Crashing (see above). I liked the story so much that I ordered a copy of Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane. (Interestingly, the version of "Chicken Marriage Sandwich" that appears in the book is quite different. I definitely recommend reading the version in Always Crashing, even if you do read, or have already read, the collection.) This story, "Disappearances," is on pages 93-101 of the book. This particular segment appears on pages 94-95. I was making a list of my other favorite stories from the collection, but it ended up being too long. (I will single out "Repentance Rebate" and "Two Bathtubs in Memphis.") 

First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it.
          On any other day they'd have seen her outside on the deck of her trailer home, good neighbors taking notice, pestering the tit of trouble as they will. All through the dog-breath air of late summer and fall, cast an eye up the mountain and there she'd be, little bleach-blonde smoking her Pall Malls, hanging on that railing like she's captain of her ship up there and now might be the hour it's going down. This is an eighteen-year-old girl we're discussing, all on her own and as pregnant as it gets. The day she failed to show, it fell to Nance Peggot to go bang on the door, barge inside, and find her passed out on the bathroom floor with her junk all over the place and me already coming out. A slick fish-colored hostage picking up grit from the vinyl tile, worming and shoving around because I'm still inside the sack that babies float in, pre-real-life.
          Mr. Peggot was outside idling his truck, headed for evening service, probably thinking about how much of his life he'd spent waiting on women. His wife would have told him the Jesusing could hold on a minute, first she needed to go see if the little pregnant gal had got herself liquored up again. Mrs. Peggot being a lady that doesn't beat around the bushes and if need be, will tell Christ Jesus to sit tight and keep his pretty hair on. She came back out yelling for him to call 911 because a poor child is in the bathroom trying to punch himself out of a bag.
—From Demon Copperhead, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2022), winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
          He found the corpse covered with a blanket on the campaign cot where he had always slept, and beside it was a stool with the developing tray he had used to vaporize the poison. On the floor, tied to a leg of the cot, lay the body of a black Great Dane with a snow-white chest, and next to him were the crutches.  
—From Love in the Time of Cholera, a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). The book was originally published in Colombia as El amor en los tiempos del cólera in 1985.  

Bonus book to read again: 

That was the spring that Ian's brother fell in love. Up till then Danny had had his share of girlfriends—various decorative Peggies or Debbies to hang upon his arm—but somehow nothing had come of them. He was always getting dumped, it seemed, or sadly disillusioned. His mother had started fretting that he'd passed the point of no return and would wind up a seedy bachelor type. Now here was Lucy, slender and pretty and dressed in red, standing in the Bedloes' front hall with her back so straight, her purse held so firmly in both hands, that she seemed even smaller than she was. She seemed childlike, in fact, although Danny described her as a "woman" when he introduced her. "Mom, Dad, Ian, I'd like you to meet the woman who's changed my life." 
—From Saint Maybe, a novel by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991/Vintage reprint, 1996).