"Granta 68: Love stories" (Granta 1999)

• Call if you need me (Raymond Carver) - Dan (his first-person) and Nancy have a son Richard about to go to college. They've each had recent affairs (he with Sue). Richard goes to stay with his grandmother while Dan and Nancy go to a rented cottage for the summer to save their marriage. On the first day they see a hummingbird, decide to fish and to get a dog. But by evening she thinks it's hopeless. She wants to see Richard and her mother. She goes to bed. When he sees a herd of white horses in the front garden he calls her. She's as awed as he is. They have a good night and sleep together. Next morning he gives her a lift to the airport. Dung and hoofprints are in the front garden. He phones Sue.
• Habibi (Ruth Gershon) - 45 pages. Hannah (a nominal jew) works as a lecturer in London. She has grown children. She lives alone. On a stay in Tel Aviv she starts living with Yussuf, an Arab. The sex is good. The jew/arab mix complicates social/admin activity. She misses him when she returns to London for the term. He doesn't reply to letters. She goes back. They argue. They make up. She realises how lazy he is. She leaves him for good. [Given the length, doesn't do enough]
• Famous people (Orhan Pamuk) - 1958. A couple plus their 2 young sons (one the first-person PoV) live in Istanbul. "Staring out of the window was such an essential habit that when television finally did arrive, people started watching it as if they were still looking outside". The boys collect cards of famous people from bubble gum packs. The persona catches his father trying to secretly leave - to Paris he says. The mother asks her mother if they can live with her. She refuses. The persona loses most of his cards in a game with his brother.
• Fit mother (Peter Ho Davies) - America. She and Bill were addicts. When she got pregnant, she stopped. When she had the baby, social services took him away saying she had 6 months to prove she was a fit mother. She went to collect her mother from far away, bringing her back to help. They hadn't met for years. Bill's arrested for selling drugs. The social worker's impressed by how she's turned her life around but says that her mother's dangerously senile. So she takes her mother back to where she has friends.
• Then and now (Daniel Meadows) - Rephotographing "ordinary" people photographed 25 years before as part of a project [Non-fiction]
• Exchange of pleasant words (Aleksandar Hemon) - The Hemon family trace their ancestor back to the Bible and Iliad. The family-council organise a "Hemoniad", inviting a lost branch of the family, the Hemuns. Videod for posterity.
• Uncle Ed (Keith Fleming) - The author when 16 went to live with his uncle, the openly gay author Edmund White. [Non-fiction. An interesting and entertaining read.]
• Going abroad (W.G. Sebald) - He goes to Vienna, having lived 25 years in England. He wanders all day, thinks he sees Dante. He spends a day with an old friend who'd been institutionised for decades. Then he catches a train to Venice. He gets a train to Verona. He thinks he's being followed. He escapes to Innsbruck. The piece includes graphics - photos, tickets, receipts.
• The furnace (Lydia Davis) - A married daughter, emotionally constrained, tries to communicate with her ailing father. They discuss their furnaces. He sends her crime cuttings from his local paper.
• Closer (David Malouf) - 6 pages. Amy, 9, belongs to a strict pentacostal family. Uncle Charles, from Sydney (Sodom) isn't allowed close. She dreams about him. [Not for me. Too much is about pentacostal oddness]
• Asking for it (James Hamilton-Paterson) - 4 pages. A British man is gang-banged by 5 Arab men in Libya. He didn't report it to the embassy or the police. He thinks it was more a political than an erotic act. [Non-fiction?]
• First cut (Jonathan Kaplan) - About becoming a South African surgeon during apartheit. His first patients were rioting students. It was difficult trying to be a neutral doctor. [Non-fiction]