the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt ten)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

Here’s what I passed that day as I walked into town. First, the familiar spray-painted sign propped on the roadside, the one that promised LIQUOR AND GAS. For years Katrina the Communist ran that old place, selling bait and beer at a discount, vodka and gasoline at a premium. Katerina was fifty my whole life, a second-generation Czech from Iowa with the same hooded eyes as my toads. She sold my dad’s blow-down wood in twined bundles and my mother’s handmade lures reconfigured as earrings. As I got older, it dawned on me that she pitied us. Once, she gave me a pair of Adidas tennis shoes that had belonged to her niece. Saying, “Goddammit, Linda” when I wouldn’t take them at first. Saying, “A high schooler does not wear hiking boots to school, period. Okay? Okay?” For years those were my very best shoes. I was wearing them that day.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt nine)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

This was probably around mid-April. I remember a glint of green had already started showing on the willows by the river. Not long after, the leaves on the sidewalk trees burst out—a wallop of bright green everywhere you looked—and I went to the credit union after work one day to see how much money I’d saved. Afterward, I went to the hardware store to buy a screw for the doorknob Ann had been complaining about for months. While I was fixing that, since I was already on my knees in the bathroom, I decided to repair the leaky bathtub faucet. I pinched a crimped nest of hair from the drain with two fingers and put a new roll of toilet paper in the dispenser and gathered up all the towels to wash at the Laundromat. I left the towels in the dryer until they were so hot they burned my arms when I hugged them out. Then I folded them into warm, leaning towers and carried them home with my chin resting on top.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt eight)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

I’d been creeping faster than she was moving away the whole time. Now I was just inches from her. There she stood, with her reeking morning breath and kitty-litter knees. I could tell by the look in her eye that she was riding just the surface of her brain, bobbing on that chippy surface of hope and worry, so on impulse I kissed her on the lips, hating her purely in that instant, wanting to do more than that, to hurt her, to get something back. Her lips were cool and flat, unresponsive. They didn’t seem like lips.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt seven)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

I watched her sit back down.

Without speaking, she broke off a piece of pancake with her fingers and put it in her mouth. I did the same. I was so hungry, and the pancakes were so warm and soft, still gooey with batter in the middle. You could eat them without chewing much, you could get a lot into your mouth at once, you could nearly drink those pancakes down. I kept breaking off and pushing pieces in my mouth, and just when I thought I’d never get enough, never be filled up, I looked over and saw that Patra had stopped eating. Her lips were partway open, and I could see the half-chewed pancake wedged between her teeth and gums, balanced in a frothy mix on her lower lip. She sat there with her cheeks bulged out for ten seconds, twenty, and then, at last, she deliberately closed her eyes, carefully rotated her jaw, and forced that huge pancake wad down her throat. I saw it go.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt six)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

“When I was your age, I wrote a novel,” my mother told me. “I put on Macbeth in my parents’ backyard with a cast of twenty characters! It was a funny version, actually.” She scrunched up her face and spoke with an exaggerated British accent: “Out, out damned Scot!” She waited for me to laugh but I wasn’t sure what part was funny. “Here,” she said then, sighing, and handed me a wand she’d made from a birch branch rolled in glue and glitter. She wanted very badly for me to cavort and pretend, to prove I was unharmed, happy. During those years she went to church on Saturdays as well as Sundays, to the Catholic and Lutheran services as well as the interfaith one, to cover all her bases. She never asked me to go along. She said she was a Religion Mutt. She couldn’t decide what mattered most: good works or God’s grace. She couldn’t settle the sacrament of blood: man’s flesh or empty metaphor. “Both sort of suck,” she said, when discouraged. What she did know, and believed with all her heart, was that it was some combination of private school and television that had corrupted her mind and cheapened her natural talents.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt five)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

“Listen, Linda.” She was attempting to whisper, so her consonants got especially hissy. “I’m not any good at explaining things. I’m not like Leo in that way. After the semester ended I got him to sit with me in the cafeteria and eat a muffin, and he had a bran and I had a blueberry, and we did that against the next week, and the next, and I remember how he tucked in his shirt when he stood up. You know how that is? How you wait for someone to do this thing, and then he does it? He tucks in his shirt the same way every time he stands up, and it seems, I don’t know, like you don’t have to go to all the work getting to know him because he does this thing, this one thing, and you can predict it. He was so smart, and I felt like I knew him better than he knew himself, right away. That’s very powerful.”

“You liked how he tucked in his shirt?” I was intrigued. I was repulsed.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt four)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

The minute the canoe touched water, it moved on its own. Every stroke with the paddle was almost excessive. There wasn’t a ripple on the lake, not a wave. You could see clear to the bottom. You could see bluegill rising, lily pads sinking under the prow. You could see air bubbles winding away in a trail behind the boat. At the far end of the lake, I pulled the canoe ashore, bent down, and rolled it up to my shoulders, my head inside the hull. It took me a second to get the balance right before I set off on the rocky portage.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt three)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

I’d seen the couple once before, in August. They’d come to oversee the construction of their lake house, which had been built by a team of college students from Duluth. The crew spent the summer clearing brush with backhoes, arranging plywood walls, stapling shingles to the vaulted roof. The house, when it was finished, was unlike anything I’d seen in Loose River. It had split-log siding and enormous triangular windows, a broad blond deck that jutted out over the lake like the prow of some ship. From their hatchback, the father had hauled Adirondack chairs and docile cats: one black and fat, the other white and draped ornamentally over his arm. I’d seen them out on their new dock one late August afternoon, bundled head to toe in towels. Father, mother, tiny child. The child’s towel dragged on the wooden planks, and the mother and father had knelt down together, at once, arranging the folds. They were like attendants to a very small bride, doting, hovering. They seemed to be saying something very sweet to the child, who had a high, frightened voice that carried across water. That was the last I’d seen of them.

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt two)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

The hockey players slept innocently on folded hands. Even the gifted and talented kids were unmoved, clicking their mechanical pencils until the lead protruded obscenely, like hospital needles. They jousted each other across the aisles. “En garde!” they hissed, contemptuously.

Mr. Grierson sat down on Mr. Adler’s desk. He was breathless from his recitation, and I realized—in an odd flash, like a too-bright light passing over him—he was middle-aged. I could see sweat on his face, his pulse pounding under gray neck stubble. “People. Guys. What does it mean that the rights of man are self-evident? Come on. You know this.”

the last book I ever read (History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund, excerpt one)

from History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund:

When the paramedics finally loaded Mr. Adler’s body onto a stretcher, the Boy Scouts trailed behind like puppies, hoping for an assignment. They wanted a door to open, something heavy to lift. In the hallway, girls stood sniffling in clumps. A few teachers held their palms to their chests, uncertain what to say or do next.

“That a Doors song?” one of the paramedics asked. He’d stayed behind to pass out packets of saltines to light-headed students. I shrugged. I must have been humming out loud. He gave me orange Gatorade in a Dixie Cup, saying—as if I were the one he’d come to save, as if his duty were to root out sickness in whatever living thing he could find—“Drink slow now. Do it in sips.”

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks Into A Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt ten)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

“I suddenly got the idea of thinking about a soft-boiled egg. Don’t look at me like that. When I was little I couldn’t stand eating soft-boiled eggs, the runny stuff made me gag, and the two of them would get mad and say I had to eat it, that all the vitamins were in that part, and there was yelling and slapping. Where food was concerned, by the way, she had no qualms about hitting. In the end, when nothing else worked, they’d tell me that if I didn’t eat my egg they’d leave the house and never come back. But I still wouldn’t eat it. So they’d put their coats on and pick up the key and stand in the doorway saying goodbye. And scared as I was to be left alone, I still didn’t eat it. I don’t know where I got the guts to stand up to them, and I argued, too, playing for time, and I just wanted it to stay like that forever, with them standing next to each other and talking to me, both the same way…”

He smiles to himself. He seems to be shrinking, his legs swinging in the air.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt nine)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

A group of five young men and women sitting close to the stage look at one another, get up, and leave. They don’t say a word. I don’t know why they stayed this long, or what made them leave at this particular moment. Dovaleh walks over to the blackboard and stands there. I sense that this abandonment is more hurtful to him than the other. Shoulders hunched, he slams the chalk down on the board: line, line, line, line, line.

But then right at the exit door, one of the women stops, the one without a boyfriend, and despite her friends’ cajoling, she says goodbye to them and sits down at an empty table. The manager signals for the waitress to go over to her. She asks for a glass of water. Dovaleh lopes back to the board like a camel—a flicker of Groucho Marx—and makes a big show of erasing one of the lines. As he does so he turns his head back and gives her a big openmouthed grin.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt eight)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

It takes him three rotations around the stage to get his breath back, and during the lull I find myself wallowing in pain from a different place. If only I had a child from her, I think for the thousandth time. But this time it stabs me somewhere new, in an organ I never knew I had. If only I had a child who would remind me of her in some small way—in the curve of her cheek, in a single movement of her mouth. That’s all. I swear, I wouldn’t need anything more.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt seven)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

It’s been a long time since someone needed me. It’s hard to describe the magnitude of the surprise that floods me. And the panic. I have a coughing attack, then I push the table away from me, standup, and still have no idea what I’m going to do. I might simply walk out—what am I even doing in this thuggish place? I should have left an hour ago. But those two are pounding the tables, and there’s Dovaleh, and I hear myself shout: “Let him tell his story already!”

Everyone falls silent and looks at me with a mixture of horror and dread, and I realize I’ve shouted much louder than I meant to.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt six)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

He stops for a sip. He wipes his glasses on the hem of his shirt, stealing a few seconds of respite. My tapas finally arrive. I’ve ordered far too much, enough for two. I ignore the looks. I know this is no time for a feast, but I have to steady my blood sugar, so I scarf down the empanadas and grilled mullet and ceviche and pickled mushrooms. Turns out that once again I ordered the dishes she likes, which will undoubtedly give me heartburn. She laughs: Well, if this is the only way, it’ll have to count as a kind of meeting. I wolf everything down and turn bilious. It’s not enough, I tell her with my mouth full. This make-believe game we play is not enough for me; I’m not satisfied with one-player ping-pong, or with having to sit here on my own with his story. You and your new boyfriend…I almost choke, and the wasabi prickles my nose and brings tears to my eyes. She quickly turns her impish smirk into a million-dollar smile and coquettishly responds: Don’t say that! Death isn’t my boyfriend yet. We’re just friends. Maybe friends with benefits.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt five)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

A sharp look at the woman who made fun of him. The audience laughs. I don’t. I saw it happen in Be’er Ora, at the Gadna Camp, for four whole days.

“But when I was on my hands, you know, no one beats up a kid walking upside down. That’s a fact. Let’s say you want to slap an upside-down kid—well, how are you gonna get to his face? I mean, you’re not gonna bend all the way down to the ground and slap him, right? Or say you wanna kick him. Where exactly would you do that? Where are his balls now anyway? Confusing, eh? Illusory! And maybe you even start to be a little afraid of him. Yeah, ‘cause an upside-down kid is no joke. Sometimes”—he sneaks a look at the medium—“you even think he’s a crazy kid. Mom, Mom, look, a boy walking on his hands! Shut up and look at the man slitting his wrists! Ouch…” He sighs.”I was a total nutcase. You can ask her what a joke I was around the neighborhood.” He jerks his thumb in her direction without looking at her. She is listening as though weighing every word, and she keeps shaking her head firmly: no.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt four)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

I rummage through my pockets, my wallet. A few years ago I would never have left home without a notebook. Little orange notebooks slept in bed with us in case, while I was falling asleep or dreaming, I conjured up an argument I could work into a ruling, or a salient metaphor, or an idea for an eye-opening quote (I was somewhat notorious for those). I find three pens but not one scrap of paper. I motion at the waitress and she brings me a small stack of green napkins, flapping them in her hand from afar and smiling stupidly.

Actually, it was a pretty sweet smile.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt three)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

The crowd laughs. I don’t. I vaguely remember that he used to mention books I’d heard of and knew I’d be tested on in a couple of years when I matriculated, but he talked about them as if he’d actually read them. Crime and Punishment was one, and if I’m not mistaken there was also The Trial or The Castle. Now, onstage, he spews out a stream of titles and authors, assuring the audience he’s never read any of them. I start to get an itch on my upper back, and I wonder if he’s just ingratiating himself with the crowd, hawking some kind of down-home folksiness, or whether he’s scheming something that will end up targeting me. I give the waitress an impatient look.

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt two)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

The dog drank some water. Her long ears touched the floor on either side of the dish. She has big bald patches all over her body and she’s almost blind. The vet wants me to put her down. He’s thirty-one. I imagine that in his view I’m also a candidate for euthanasia. I put my feet up on a chair and tried to calm down. Three years ago, because of these outbursts, I lost my job. And it occurs to me: Who knows what I’ve lost now?

“On the other other hand,” he went on, and only then did I realize how long the silence had lasted, each of us lost in his own thoughts, “when you do stand-up you sometimes make people laugh, and that’s no small thing.”

the last book I ever read (A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, excerpt one)

from A Horse Walks into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman:

He clearly enjoys the confusion he sows. He turns around slowly on the axis of one foot like a compass, and when he completes the rotation his face his twisted and bitter again: “I have an exciting announcement, Netanya. You won’t believe your luck, but today, August twentieth, happens to be my birthday. Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind.” He bows modestly. “Yes, that’s right, fifty-seven years ago today the world became a slightly worse place to live in. Thank you, sweethearts.” He prances across the stage and cools his face with an imaginary fan. “That’s nice of you, really, you shouldn’t have, it’s too much, drop the checks in the box on your way out, cash you can stick to my chest after the show, and if you brought sex coupons you can come up right now.”

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt seven)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

Noa was able to buy every book he needed for his classes, and when he couldn’t find one at the bookstore, all he had to do was go to the immense university library, which was deepy underutilized by his peers. He didn’t understand the Japanese students around him, because they seemed so much more interested in things outside of school rather than learning. He knew well enough from schools past that the Japanese didn’t want much to do with Koreans, so Noa kept to himself, no different than when he was a boy. There were some Koreans at Waseda, but he avoided them, too, because they seemed too political. During one of their monthly lunches, Hansu had said that the leftists were “a bunch of whiners” and the rightists were “plain stupid.” Noa was alone mostly, but he didn’t feel lonely. Even after two years, he was still in thrall with just being at Waseda, with just having a quiet room to read in. Like a man starved, Noa filled his mind, ravenous for good books. He read through Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austen, and Trollope, then moved on to the Continent to read through much of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, then fell in love with Tolstoy. His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at least half a dozen times.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt six)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

Mozasu kept a photograph of the wrestler Rikidozan taped to the inside lid of his trunk, where he kept his special things like his favorite comics, old coins, and his father’s eyeglasses. Unlike the Korean wrestler, Mozasu did not like to get too close to his opponent and tussle for too long. Rikidozan was known for his famous karate chop, and similarly, Mozasu had deadly aim with his strikes.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt five)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

Tamaguchi, a fifty-eight-year-old sweet-potato farmer, did not mind having the extra pairs of hands. His regular workers and seasonal ones had been conscripted years ago, and there were no able-bodied men to replace them. Several of his former workers had already died in Manchuria, with two badly disabled in battle, and there had been scant news of the other sent to Singapore and the Phillipines. Each morning, as Tamaguchi rose from his futon, he suffered from the routine aches that accompanied aging; however, he was relieved to be old, since he would not have to fight the stupid war. The shortage of men impaired his ambitions for his farm, especially at a time when there was a growing demand for potatoes. Tamaguchi could command any illegal price he wanted, it seemed, and now that he had tasted wealth, so much so that he’d been forced to hide troves of treasure in various parts of the farm, he was willing to do whatever it took to squeeze every golden drop from this national calamity.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt four)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

“The police arrested them this morning—when everyone went to the Shinto shrine to bow, one of the village leaders noticed Hu mouthing the words of the Lord’s Prayer when they were supposed to be pledging allegiance to the Emperor. The police office who was supervising questioned Hu, and Hu told him that this ceremony was idol worshipping and he wouldn’t do it anymore. Pastor Yoo tried to tell the police that the boy was misinformed, and that he didn’t mean anything by it, but Hu refused to agree with Pastor Yoo. Pastor Baek tried to explain, too, but Hu said he was willing to walk into the furnace. Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! Do you know that story?”

“Yes, yes,” Yoseb said, annoyed by their religious excitement. “Are they at the station now?”

The women nodded.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt three)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

Early next morning, using the map his brother Yoseb had drawn for him on a scrap of butcher paper, Isak found the Hanguk Presbyterian Church—a slanted wooden frame house in the back streets of Ikaino, a few steps away from the main shotengai—its only distinguishing mark a humble white cross painted on its brown wooden door.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt two)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

“Are you all right?” Shin asked.

“Sir, I was wondering if we could talk. Talk about the Book of Hosea.”

“Oh? Of course.” Pastor Shin looked puzzled.

the last book I ever read (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, excerpt one)

from National Book Award Finalist Pachinko by Min Jin Lee:

If it were possible for a man and his wife to share one heart, Hoonie was this steady, beating organ. They had lost their other sons—the youngest to measles and the middle, good-for-nothing one to a goring bull in a pointless accident. Except for school and the market, the old couple kept young Hoonie close by the house, and eventually, as a young man, Hoonie needed to stay home to help his parents. They could not bear to disappoint him; yet they loved him enough not to dote on him. The peasants knew that a spoiled son did more harm to a family than a dead one, and they kept themselves from indulging him too much.