Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (2016), translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes (2020)

IV
...the Witch they all went on about was in fact a man, a fellow of about forty, forty-five back then, dressed in black clothing, in ladies clothing, and with long, black painted nails: gruesome (82).

VYou think one day he’s going to give up the ( Read more... )

Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis (2020)

PreludialYou won’t believe this, but turning sixty, for men, is a great relief. To start with, it’s a great relief from your fifties. Of the seven decades: the thirties constitute the prince, the fifties the pauper. I assumed that my sixties would differ from my fifties only in being much, much worse, ( Read more... )

Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis (2020)

Part III-Dissolutions: Antepenultimate
1 | The Shadow-Line…Nobodaddy For a while they all talked about a report on the financial toll of pandemic childhood obesity. That generation would be sickly, true, and very expensive to treat; on the other hand, they would cost practically nothing to police, being ( Read more... )

Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek (2020)

American Interiors
The Dance It is as though the lexis of their feelings is a separate creature within the house. Like a fat cat that holds all their secrets and stolen glances. Howling, obese, and grumpy, the keeper of their true feelings, bursting with things that want to be said (24 ( Read more... )

Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas (2020)

SP8
The Bystander by Gina Berriault ...and so Antonio switches on the lamp in the living room of the apartment where his daughters live and searches for his copy of A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims, which he doesn’t find in the bookshelves nearby so he switches off the lamp and powers on the flashlight ( Read more... )

Eartheater by Dolores Reyes (2019), translated by Julia Sanches (2020)

Part One
I’d started noticing a special trait in people who were looking for someone, a mark near the eyes, the mouth, a mixture of pain, anger, strength, and expectation made flesh. A thing broken, possessed by the person who wasn’t coming back (19).

Part TwoHe held me a long ( Read more... )

Prefecture D: Four Novellas by Hideo Yokoyama (1998), translation by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies (2019)

Briefcase
Chapter 6 “You know, there’s something I’ve come to understand,” Mayuzumi began, as though to himself. “You can’t make new friends after thirty. You’ll have colleagues you work closely with, sure, maybe even a few you’ll trust. But they won’ ( Read more... )

True Story: A Novel by Kate Reed Petty (2020)

Prologue: Barcelona (2015)You’ve always been so sure of the story you want me to tell, the story you’ve been asking me for since we were seventeen: the story about the things that happened while I was asleep... But the story is mine only as the victim owns the prosecution, or the whale the harpoon. ( Read more... )

House of Correction by Nicci French (2020)

Part Two: Prosecution
Fifty-Two Tabitha had heard of those dreams where people find themselves on a stage, not knowing the lines, not even knowing what the play is. Tabitha had never been on a stage and she had never dreamed about being onstage, so she had never understood the anxiety behind it ( Read more... )

Fiebre Tropical by Juli Delgado Lopera (2020)

Chapter UnoThe heat is a stubborn bitch breathing its humid mouth on your every pore, reminding you this hell is inescapable, and in another language (1 ( Read more... )