I‘m a fan of Annie Proulx, so I am excited that we get a pretty lengthy story from her in this year’s New Yorker fiction issue: “The Hadal Zone.” It doesn’t appear to be an excerpt from another work. Here is how it starts:

Arwen Rasmont waits hours at Keflavík International for his flight; they call it as he leaves the men’s room. He walks past the mirrored wall and is assaulted, as usual, by his dead father’s handsome image: high-arched nose, yellow hair. A difference in the contact glance—the father’s a hard squinting challenge, the son’s sidelong and measuring.

Please feel free to comment with your thoughts below!

The other three stories in this week’s magazine have their own posts which I’ll link to here:

• “The Drummer Boy on Independence Day,” by E.L. Doctorow
• “Kaho,” by Haruki Murakami
• “Opening Theory,” by Sally Rooney