Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
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Book Summary Author: Raymond Carver Introduction: Robert Altman Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1993-09-14 ISBN: 0679748644 Number of pages: 157 Publisher: Vintage |
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Book Reviews of the Short Cuts: Selected Stories
Customer Review: Enjoyed every page
Summary: 4 Stars
This small book (157 pages) is a collection of Raymond Carver's short stories. The book has been made into a movie of the same title. There are in all nine stories. The last `Lemonade' as a feels more like a prosem.
I had not read any of Carver's books and this book came as a wonderful surprise. While I did not like some of the stories, I loved the way he had written (Carver passed away in 1988) all of them. He has a wonderful ability to paint the deepest agonies of human heart. And he can make you dislike the characters as easily as he can make you empathize with them.
The story `Will you Be Quiet Please?' is also the title of another of his book. It revolves around a man's anguish who finds his wife had sex with his friend but she is refusing to tell him the details of the act. Unable to know what exactly she did and why she did it, the man spends the whole night drinking outside the house. With every paragraph you can feel the escalating pain of the man.
In `They're Not Your Husband' a man forces his wife to lose weight because he overhears a comment made by two men on oversize rear. But he becomes intrigued that after she lost weight nobody is taking any notice of her figure.
One of the stories I liked was `Vitamins', about how a man, on the verge of committing adultery with a wife's colleague develops a sudden revulsion to her by the realization of her true nature. A good ending.
`So Much Water So Close To Home' is about a woman obsessed with a girl whose body was noticed by her husband while on picnic but doesn't act till he finishes enjoying his outing.
`A Small Good Thing' is a very touching story about a boy getting involved in an accident on his birthday. His mother had ordered a cake for his birthday. I couldn't make sense of the ending.
`Collectors' is not even much of a story.
The worst was the `Tell the Women We're Going.' The end is shocking but I couldn't make sense of it. Why a character would suddenly becomes violent. There has not been any hint of his violent nature. There is no foreshadowing either. There has not been that provoking behavior from two strangers to result in their tragic end. And if the character has changed what led to the change?
Conclusion: I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in reading short stories. Carver has his own style but some stories reminded me of `Somerset Maugham.' Wonderful prose. High literary value.