Be warned, a couple of these are seriously heavy reads.
Nonfiction by Anne Panning, and fiction by Michelle Drozdick, Susan Perabo, Michael Brooks, and Marco Visciolaccio
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Nonfiction
The Way Seahorses Hang On by Anne Panning
From the first sentence this feels like an instant classic piece of writing, and the writing is just filled with visual language and thought-provoking metaphor. This story has come back to me almost daily for a week.
Rain gush-pummels our car. Whippet wipers slash frantically at the whitecaps. Off to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, to watch our daughter, Lily’s, volleyball tournament. It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and our son, Hudson, is meeting us there from Pittsburgh.
After we’ve tunneled our way out of the storm, we’re spit into a mystical world of blue that looks exhausted. I grab my book: The Curious World of Seahorses.
“Did you know,” I ask my husband, Mark, “that seahorses are surprisingly loud? And they love to dance?”
Fiction
So We Sat in the Parking Lot and Laughed About Death by Michelle Drozdick
This story just took me out. I was a sniffling mess on the train. The combination of heartbreak and humour in this story is unforgettable.
My grandmother was in the backseat, tucked away neatly inside my mother’s tote bag. We hit a bump and a corner of the bag tilted downward, revealing the tiniest peek of her bronze urn. I turned back to the road ahead, wishing it were my father in the passenger seat and me in the back, watching a living Nana grimace as Dad cracked jokes about phallic-sounding town names on exit signs and trying to convince us all to play yet another round of “I Spy”.
Then again, my father in his current state probably wouldn’t be the best road trip companion. We might get away with driving in the carpool lane, but there’d be too much dirt and other matter to clean out of the faux leather seats, to say nothing of the smell.
The Life of the Mother by Susan Perabo
This story shook me. The steady reveals and rising tension result in a story about a woman’s pregnancy that’s unforgettable.
Following the meeting with the doctor, there was no thought of a baby shower. Too much rage. Too much grief. The two were indistinguishable, separate ropes twisted into a single noose. Bullshit about stages of grief, the mother thought; it was everything all at once
Swordfish Strips by Michael Brooks
Swordfish Strips is told by a server at a swanky restaurant, as she low-key obsesses about a fashionable couple at one of her tables. The story surprises, and Brooks captures so many subtle details that are revealing about each character.
Emily spots her strutting up to the hostess stand: a willowy curl of a woman, Asian and raven-haired, white blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt at her narrow waist. Her eyes are sharp as blades, bright as the silver chain about her neck. She grips a Prada handbag that fins from her side and points with a slender finger to a table at the wide bow window, in Emily’s section. Nothing in her face or posture wavers.
3/1 Walking Distance from Packard’s Corner (Great Investment) by Marco Visciolaccio
I feel like every story about a creepy apartment I read winds up here. I love how the narrator of the story slowly reveals more about his own psychological state.
It’s not worth knowing what’s inside the wall. The thing’s brick and I’m not made of money, especially not after buying a home. The knocking you hear, coming from behind it—just ignore it. It’s the big city; apartments always knock. It’s the air conditioner in the place next door, maybe. The pipes, probably settling. It’s nothing to concern yourself with as a first-time home (apartment) buyer—
It’s just a vaguely human shape painted on the wall of one of the bedrooms, that knocks at specific intervals.
