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

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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).

A poem by Shiyang Su; short stories by Alejandro Zambra, Rachel Kushner, and Miranda July; and a novel by Alexandra Chang

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In the previous life, you and I were the last line
of an old Chinese myth: A ransacked empire. 
A black jade swallowed by the young lapidary . . . 
—From "Love Letter," a poem by Shiyang Su, Diode Poetry Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer 2024).

I didn't want to go to New York, because I didn't want to cut my hair. And my father didn't read my "Letter to My Father." 
          "I'll read it next time I feel like crying," he told me. "Except I never feel like crying." 
—From "Skyscrapers," a short story by Alejandro Zambra, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, The New Yorker (August 22, 2022), pp. 54-59.

George said that was fine. He had always picked people up. It was like they knew. They understood that they could just walk up to his car window at a stoplight. Crutch up to the window. 
          The man was impressively nimble getting in the car with the crutches and the missing half leg and his beer bottle, as though he'd been managing this way for some time. 
          The gates went up. As they set off, the man raised his bottle in a toast, the turbulence of the uneven train tracks sloshing beer onto the car seat. George did not care, had never cared about anything material and certainly not this Ford Crown Victoria, which looked like an undercover cop car.
—From "A King Alone" by Rachel Kushner, The New Yorker (July 11 & 18, 2022), pp. pp. 50-61.

If I were a more self-assured person I would not have volunteered to give up my seat on an overcrowded flight, would not have been upgraded to first class, would not have been seated beside him. This was my reward for being a pushover. He slept for the first hour, and it was startling to see such a famous face look so vulnerable and empty. 
—From "Roy Spivey," a short story by Miranda July, The New Yorker (June 11 & 18, 2007). It was reprinted in the issue from August 29, 2022, pp. 56-59.

People think I'm smaller than I am. For example, my feet. In fact, I wear size 8.5 or 9. According to Google, these are the most common sizes for American women. Average is good, I reason. It means that wherever I end up in this country it will be easy to find someone whose shoes I can borrow. 
—From Days of Distraction, a novel by Alexandra Chang (Ecco, 2020). 

Novels by Miranda July and Kim Thúy, short stories by Kathy Fish and Alexandra Chang, and essays by David Sedaris

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If you are suffering from insomnia, and you are listening to Miranda July narrate the audiobook version of her recent novel, All Fours, then you, too, may have the experience of being awake at two or three o'clock in the morning listening to her read the following passage about the narrator preparing for a two-and-a-half-week road trip: 

The Benadryl was for sleep, not allergies. I'd been having this thing where I woke up every night at two a.m. It wasn't a big deal unless I didn't have Benadryl and then it was a harrowing fugue state ending only when the sun rose on a fragile, weeping shell of a person, unable to work or think, much less drive safely. That's why I needed extra. 
—From All Fours, a novel by Miranda July (Riverhead Books, 2024). The segment above is from page 25 of the print hardcover. This book is about intimacy and desire, among other things, and has a lot of explicit scenes. 

I have failed the time unit. My father takes down the clock and sets it on the table. He moves the hands. See? I place my pinky against the second hand and wind it counterclockwise.
          Maybe this is a story about a clock with no hands.
—From "Alligator," a piece of flash fiction by Kathy Fish, Northwest Review (2023).

The story of the little girl who was swallowed up by the sea after she'd lost her footing while walking along the edge spread through the foul-smelling belly of the boat like an anaesthetic or laughing gas, transforming the single bulb into a polar star and the biscuits soaked in motor oil into butter cookies.
—From Ru, a short novel by Kim Thúy, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman (Bloomsbury USA, 2012). This book was originally published in French in Canada (Éditions Libre Expression, Montreal, 2009). The English translation was originally published simultaneously in Canada (Random House Canada, Toronto, 2012) and in the United Kingdom (The Clerkenwell Press, a division of Profile Books Limited, London, 2012). A note at the beginning of the book mentions that "in French, ru means a small stream and, figuratively, a flow" (of tears, blood, money). "In Vietnamese, ru means a lullaby, to lull." Based on Kim Thúy's real-life experiences before and after leaving Vietnam, this novel is composed of short, often poetic vignettes.  

Now I was very much in my thirties, jobless, with nothing tying me to the place where I lived besides the one-bedroom apartment I rented that still had ten months on the lease. I wasn't hurting for money yet, but I was bored and growing increasingly anxious. I suspected I should be doing more with my time than eating weed gummies and lying in bed binge-watching reality dating shows with heinous and hilarious names like Simp Island and From Stalker to Lover. The shows made me certain I would die alone. It wasn't necessarily the most frightening thought, since I liked being alone, but it was the first time in my life that I had the time to meditate on my mortality, on how everything I had spent the last seven years of my life doing—focusing on my career, developing my independence, saving my money for some future better life—had been, ultimately, meaningless . . . 
—From Tomb Sweeping, a collection of short stories by Alexandra Chang (Ecco, 2023). This segment is from the first story, "Unknown by Unknown" (pp. 1-23 in the paperback). My favorite stories from the collection were two that appeared back to back and felt somewhat related: "A Visit" (pp. 106-116) and "Flies" (pp. 117-135), the latter of which was first published in Harvard Review (Issue 58).   

Bonus book to read again: 

I was on the front porch, drowning a mouse in a bucket, when this van pulled up, which was strange. On an average day, a total of fifteen cars might pass the house, but no one ever stops, not unless they live here. And this was late, three o'clock in the morning. 
—From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2004). This segment is from "Nuit of the Living Dead," which appears on pages 246-257 of the original hardcover and appeared in The New Yorker (February 16, 2004), pp. 74-78, with the title "The Living Dead." 

A novel by Andrew Holleran, an essay by Mary Grimm, and little stories by Sarah Priscus, Juan Ramirez, and Mikki Aronoff

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There was, however, one reason I'd stop at Orange Heights on my way home from Gainesville that had nothing to do with sex or loneliness, and that was to listen to the music on the public radio station broadcast from the university, because its signal extended only as far as 301. WUFT-FM, like many public radio stations, had played classical music until the mid-1980s, when it switched to all-talk, which upset so many listeners that the station created a separate frequency, a spin-off for people who could not bear the loss of Beethoven and Brahms. But the signal of this subsidiary station did not go nearly as far as the main frequency; in fact it stopped, more or less, at Orange Heights.
          There had always been something frustrating about WUFT-FM when the station played classical music—as if the selections were being chosen by music majors who refused to play masterpieces because they were too popular. When it became all-talk the station was tedious for other reasons. Its few local shows were dumped for syndicated programs that continued even after their moderators were no longer with us. Even after one of the hosts of Car Talk died, for example, they kept broadcasting reruns on weekends. 
—From The Kingdom of Sand, a novel by Andrew Holleran (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022). This segment appears on page 8 of the hardcover. The Kingdom of Sand is generally plotless and seems more like a handful of related essays than a novel in any traditional sense. The nameless main character is a gay man who has moved to Florida to take care of his parents and who continues to live there, at least most of the time, long after their deaths. The longest section, "Hurricane Weather" (pp. 75-239), is about the narrator's relationship with his friend Earl during the last years of Earl's life. There is quite a bit of repetition, and the book is largely a thoughtful meditation on aging, death, and loneliness. There is a pervasive feeling of sadness and nostalgia. However, there are some beautiful turns of phrase here, and I found myself not wanting the book to end. 

The way I remember it, your dad was dying, not mine . . .
—From "Clutch," a piece of flash fiction by Mikki Aronoff, 100 Word Story. 

There is a letter slipped under the door. Final notice. I am summoned to appear nude in the streets for my designated torture and/or execution.
—From "Gone Fishing," a piece of flash fiction by Juan Ramirez, The Blood Pudding, Issue 14 (February 19, 2024). 

The kid next to me on the charter—bearded, but a baby—asks why I’m crying, and I lie and say my parents have died in an oil fire, a donut-frying accident, and he hands me a bottle of orange juice because he knows I’ll need my strength.
—From "Overnight," a piece of flash fiction by Sarah Priscus, The Blood Pudding, Issue 13 (November 27, 2023). 

I went swimming with my two daughters when they were both expecting babies. The three of us had gone away for the weekend, and were staying at a hotel in Port Clinton, Ohio, which was close to where we used to go on vacation when they were little. 
—From "Swimming with My Daughters," a personal essay by Mary Grimm, The New Yorker (May 11, 2024). 

Stories by Bennett Sims, Jared Hanson, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and André Alexis, and a prose poem by Joni Wallace

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The client turned out to be an older man, a lawyer nearing retirement.
          I met him at his office downtown, where he gestured for me to sit across the desk from him, as though I were the client and his were the services we were there to discuss.
—From "The Postcard," a short story by Bennett Sims, Socrates on the Beach, Issue 7. It was included in his collection Other Minds and Other Stories (Two Dollar Radio, 2023). My other favorite from the collection was "Unknown," which originally appeared in The Kenyon Review. 

At the end of the summer of 1995, I had finished all my credits for high school and my father handed me twenty dollars. That's the last you're getting from me, he said. Either I had to enroll in the community college or start paying him rent. No, he said, let me rephrase that: you're going to pay me rent and I'll pay your tuition at the community college.
—From "My Life on the Streets," a short story by Jared Hanson, Bodega, Issue 134 (March 2024).

It's around six months or so after society has begun changing, mainly for the worse, when Lizzy and I decide to take that trip we've been talking about for so long, and which, only in hindsight, is probably our biggest mistake, i.e., not knowing what we're getting ourselves into.
—From American Estrangement, a short story collection by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (W. W. Norton, 2021). This segment is from "Scenic Route." Please note: the sixth/next-to-last story in this collection, the one with the metaphor in the title, contains an uncomfortable subplot that may not be for everyone.

Math was tricky ground for him: it could be useful, but was often frivolous. He saw math as the thin edge of the entertainment wedge, as if, once you engaged with Fermat's Last Theorem, reality TV was not far behind. 
—From "Houyhnhnm," a short story by André Alexis, The New Yorker (June 20, 2022), pp. 52-58.

Starlings chitter up in dawn-light. Slip-of-a-dog, a languid coyote, steals between houses,
—From "Clockwork," a prose poem by Joni Wallace, Rhino (2024). 

A poem by George Oppen, a film written by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, and short stories by Claire-Louise Bennett, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and Souvankham Thammavongsa

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We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars we walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water
—From "The Forms of Love" by George Oppen, reprinted by The Academy of American Poets. This segment was highlighted on their social media on April 24, 2024, during National Poetry Month. "The Forms of Love" was included in New Collected Poems of George Oppen (New Directions Publishing, 2008).

At the bottom of the street was the common and that was one of the few places I could handle at certain times of the day. Wearing a long green velvet skirt that mingled with the gently surging grass, I'd walk slowly, sedately even, around the ponds, dispensing bread along the way so that the ducks would stay with me. I would have been ill at ease anywhere, I expect, but London has a way of embellishing a minor dread so that it takes on pathological and seductive proportions.
—From "Invisible Bird," a short story by Claire-Louise Bennett, The New Yorker (May 30, 2022), pp. 54-59.

Somebody said, of course money doesn't make you happy, but it's still better to cry in a car than in a subway.
—From Anatomy of a Fall (2023), a French film originally titled Anatomie d'une chute, which was directed by Justine Triet and written by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari. It stars Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, and Milo Machado-Graner. It's a crime drama, split between English and French, and has won a slew of awards including an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

"Just be careful," they told me, but they didn't offer any follow-up, and partly because I knew they were suggesting something that I didn't really want to hear, and because I knew this would be the best job I'd ever be able to find, I never asked them to elaborate. Before leaving, they'd say, "Don't stay too late."
—From "Nondisclosure Agreement," a short story by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, The New Yorker (May 9, 2022), pp. 62-68.

The evening I actually met Miss Emily's son, I was finishing up my shift when I saw him come in. He seemed real glamorous, and I hadn't seen someone like that before so close up, looking right back at me.
—From "Trash," a story by Souvankham Thammavongsa, The New Yorker (June 13, 2022), pp. 58-60.

The Spring 2024 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2024 issue of the Apple Valley Review features features flash fiction by Andrew Siegrist, K. A. Polzin, and Leo Vanderpot; short stories by Thomas Mixon, Roger Mensink, and Molly Lurie-Marino; poetry by J. R. Forman, Stan Sanvel Rubin, Jadranka Milenković (translated from the Serbian by Petar Penda), Brian Johnson, Sarvin Parviz, and Judith Harris; and a cover image by Colombian photographer Edgar Serrano.

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.