Fiction

On her deathbed, as she drew what were to be her last breaths on God’s green earth, the old woman made a confession so terrible to her husband that-even under circumstances as solemn and sorrowful as these-he could hardly take the secret as true, let alone forgive her for it. He listened by her side,…

from The Feast of Love As a Jew, I am drawn in a suicidal manner toward the maddest of Christians. Kierkegaard, being one of the craziest and most lovable of the lot, and, therefore, dialectically, possibly the most sane of them all, is of compelling interest to me. All my life, I have tracked his…

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces. The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious…

At first when the captain’s voice came on over the intercom and made the announcement, she felt almost glad. Not gleeful exactly, but a sudden ching! of recognition coursed through her; events fell into place. She was glad she’d had her weekend at the hotel, glad for her swim in the hotel pool, for sleeping…

1 We got up at dawn, ignored the yolky sun, loaded our navy-blue Austin with suitcases, and then drove straight to the coast, stopping only on the verge of Sarajevo, so I could pee. I sang communist songs the entire journey: songs about mournful mothers looking through graves for their dead sons; songs about the…

Gina had all the symptoms: sleep disturbances, hot flashes, irritability, weight gain, loss of libido, aching joints, and heart palpitations. The one she complained of most was hot flashes, which she dealt with by throwing off her clothes and cursing. As far as Evan was concerned, her irritability was the worst symptom; she was increasingly…

There were only a few perfect spots in the world, and Leo Spivak had finally found one of them, right here in Mendocino. He was stretched out just inside the screen door of the brown-shingled beachfront cottage he and his wife, Rachel, had rented for a week-just the two of them, alone in all this…

A turquoise silk scarf, elegantly long, and narrow; so delicately threaded with pale gold and silver butterflies, you might lose yourself in a dream contemplating it, imagining you’re gazing into another dimension or another time in which the heraldic butterflies are living creatures with slow, pulsing wings. Eleven years old, I was searching for a…

I won’t tell you my name. I don’t know who you are; maybe you’d pass my name on, and there are many whom I fear now. I would love it if I had nothing to tell you. I have lost nearly everything-country, family, name-but I have retained my honor and gained a story, to my…