This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Nicole Kraus read her story Long Island from the May 22, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Kraus is the author of four novels, including The History of Love and Forest Dark.

Her story collection, to be a man, was published in 2020 and won the Wingate Literary Prize.

Now here's Nicole Kraus.

Long Island.

Riding the brakes, bumper to bumper down 34th Street.

At last, we cross Second Avenue, and our father toes the gas, and spins the giant steering wheel,

mahogany, and fit for a ship.

For that's what this metallic, pink champagne-colored Cadillac Fleetwood Brom is.

An 18-and-a-half-foot urban yacht, and the least practical vehicle imaginable,

for sailing through bankrupt, crime-ridden, late 1970s, New York City.

We follow the slight curve of the down ramp until we're sucked into the mouth of the mid-town tunnel with a wamp,

and the pressure changes as the car descends.

The soundscape becomes tamped down, interiorized, like when we jump into the pool, and hear the thought of blood in our ears.

Kneeling by the window, because there are no seatbelts to prevent us.

We see the grimy, white wall tiles smear past in a dizzying, almost nauseating way.

Even the light is grimmed and fluorescent dim, flickering to the tune of a seizure.

Halfway through claustrophobia sets in, and it really does seem as if there will never be an end to it,

never a light at the end of the tunnel.

Well above the brown and vaguely furry ceiling of the Cadillac, and the exhaust grade ceiling of the tunnel itself,

...