The best-written recent literary fiction: That's All I Know by Elisa Levi
Read the opening pages below
RUMINATING, LIKE COWS DO
I tell the man that the only thing he’ll find on this path is forest. That’s all I know. ‘But it’s in there,’ he replies. No, no, no way, I insist. You’ll die if you go into the forest. If you want, I’ll point the way or take you to where your dog is. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he says. And I say, ‘Around here, dogs that haven’t eaten always go to the same place.’ ‘But my dog’s in there,’ he repeats. No, no, no way. I put a hand out to stop him ’cause I know that people who go into the forest never come out. They never reach anywhere and they die. They get tired and dehydrated. Or they get tired and die of cold. Or they get tired and life no longer offers them a way forward. I tug on his arm and explain. I explain that I belong here more than anyone else, that I might not be very old, but I know this place ’cause I have a backstory. I say that if he wants, I’ll tell him my story: I lost a dog when I was younger and it was with the hares.
You’re from goodness knows where, so you don’t know this, but around here lost dogs follow the scent of food and their frantic owners go rushing into the forest. I can’t count the number of people I’ve seen never return from the Landas, from the woodlands. You don’t know the first thing about it, but the fact is there’s no way out of that forest. And I notice that the man’s breathing sounds laboured and the beads of sweat falling from his brow could fill every well for miles around. The expression on his face moves me, makes me think I could tell him all about it. I could tell him that I’m leaving, that I’ve decided to leave this small place. And I soon begin to think this lost, confused man is the only person in the world who might understand me. Yes, he, and he alone, might understand me. You see, I say, sitting him down to rest on the bench I’m leaning against; this bench is always in the shade and if the man goes on sweating like that, he’ll die without ever finding his dog. You see, I say, my dog got lost one Sunday in summer and my sister – she’s empty-headed ’cause she didn’t breathe when she was being born – cried in a different way. Nora usually only cries when her body hurts her. If you pinch her, she cries, if her stomach rumbles, she cries. But love, loneliness, sorrow; none of those things makes her cry. And that summer morning she cried ’cause the dog didn’t come back and our father said, ‘It’s gone to the place where the dead hares are.’ And, would you believe it, Nora cried less. Around here, there are piles of dead hares. Animals that die lie in a heap and make an awful stink. But then, sir, I don’t know anything about stinks ’cause I’ve never had a sense of smell, just like my mother, though she says she could smell a little as a teenager, but I’ve never been able to. And that’s a pity ’cause they say the scent of our tomatoes carries for miles. But that’s all I know about smells, and you don’t know anything about dogs that get lost here. We know about other things. Anyway, when we got there, the dog was dead. And my mother saw the blood dripping from its jaws and cried out, ‘It must have been a wolf.’
But I knew it had been Esteban – he lives across from where the hares are piled up – he’s sort of trigger-happy and we don’t get many wolves in these parts. Esteban went and killed my dog, and I wanted to kill him for making my sister cry. But don’t you worry, just sit here quietly, your dog is filling its stomach and we’ll see it sniffing around here again soon. Dogs aren’t like me, I can tell you. I’m more like a cat; they sniff and come to care for you. Just rest here with me, your shirt is all soaked in sweat. You’ll see, the dog will soon turn up.
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Literary fiction titles considered this month
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann; translated by Ross Benjamin
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen by Shokoofeh Azar
Twelve Post-War Tales by Graham Swift
All the Mothers by Domenica Ruta
The Names by Florence Knapp
Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis
Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund
The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne
The Missing Kidney by Maxine Rosaler
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
That's All I Know by Elisa Levi; translated by Christina MacSweeney
Sing to Me by Jesse Browner
The Fate of Others by Richard Bausch
Autocorrect by Etgar Keret; translated by Jessica Cohen & Sondra Silverston
Ghost Wedding by David Park
The Boys by Leo Robson
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi
Gunk by Saba Sams
Dream State by Eric Puchner
The Pretender by Jo Harkin
The Propagandist by Cécile Desprairies
Lovers of Franz K by Burhan Sönmez
Back in the Day by Oliver Lovrenski
Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst
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