Our fiction pick of the week, from Electric Literature: “Hello Everybody,” by A.M. Homes. (Thanks, Elliott Holt.) See more Longreads fiction picks
fiction
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Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Stories from Vanity Fair, The Billfold, The New Yorker, Wired and New York magazine, plus fiction from Electric Literature and a guest pick by Brittany Shoot.
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[Fiction] A philandering husband’s next phase in life: Horace and Loneese Perkins—one child, one grandchild—lived most unhappily together for more than twelve years in Apartment 230 at Sunset House, a building for senior citizens at 1202 Thirteenth Street NW. They moved there in 1977, the year they celebrated forty years of marriage, the year they made […]
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[Fiction] A teacher ventures north for a new position: On the bench outside the station, I sat and waited. The station had been open when the train arrived, but now it was locked. Another woman sat at the end of the bench, holding between her knees a string bag full of parcels wrapped in oiled […]
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[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes: I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having […]
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Interpreters of Men Get It On
[Fiction] Excerpt from Woke Up Lonely: Boredom, loneliness and a loss of innocence at a remote listening station in the middle of nowhere: We got to the cave, the door was unlocked, and inside were a few cryptanalysts I’d seen around, but never talked to. They were gathered at a work station-turned-bar, and playing cards. […]
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Interpreters of Men Get It On
[Fiction] Excerpt from Woke Up Lonely: Boredom, loneliness and a loss of innocence at a remote listening station in the middle of nowhere: We got to the cave, the door was unlocked, and inside were a few cryptanalysts I’d seen around, but never talked to. They were gathered at a work station-turned-bar, and playing cards. […]
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[Fiction] Excerpt from What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award: A father tells his son the truth about a man who beat him during wartime: Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to […]
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[Fiction] A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo: Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. […]
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[Fiction] A young girl encounters an older group of students: The morning of the abduction, Mrs. Allsop—dishevelled in a limp linen shirtdress—was wielding her secateurs up a ladder, pruning the climbing roses. She was immensely capable; tall and big-boned with a pink, pleasant face and dry yellow hair chopped sensibly short. Jane admired her mother […]