Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read some fiction. It’s good for you.

– The shoe was not a literal shoe but a shoe-shaped apartment, a long centre hall ending in a crimp. From above, it looked like a boot lain on its side. She rented, but two grandsons would later buy the place. Her upwardly mobile desires were reserved for progeny, though naturally some children succeeded where others didn’t. “Neither tragedy nor triumph,” she told herself, “just a life.” — J. David Stevens in The Journal

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The Price Is Right

Richard Price is in Seattle this week, speaking on a double bill that will investigate his unusual and powerful ability to write novels, telescripts and screenplays. What’s interesting to us — beyond Price’s obvious awesomeness — is a man who’s notoriously bad at speaking publicly trying to hold sway over an audience. Of course, if interest is high, most anybody can control an audience’s attention. But it’s worth watching, especially when you think about constructing narratives, how Price pulls it off. Who knows, in his telling of the Writing Life he may actually show more than he tells. In other news, Dan Chaon talks to The Review Review about submitting to literary magazines, an author tries to find out what Jesus, really, would do, and a new book — flush with sexual affairs and exotic locations — is charred in The Complete Review. Still hungry? Good, there’s more: Alice Munro speaks! When India is in turmoil the Virginia Quarterly Review follows, and an author goes round for round with a bunch of Oregon toughs. Finally, Mavis Gallant dreams of bad prose and Granta reconsiders Rushdie, who, on this after-holiday Monday, is determined to let his feathers fly. — Kevin Murphy

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