Product DescriptionAmong the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the offensive conviviality of the ship's social director.
Fondly yet sharply drawn, Wolff's characters stumble over each other in their baffled yet resolute search for the 'right path.'
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - This One's a Winner
These tales evoke a poetical kind of realism. "Hunters in the Snow" is a tragic but comic portrayal of three bumbling hunters acting dumb but believable: so in character with themselves yet slightly bizarre. Everything in these tales is real. There is no trumped up language or superfluous prose. The narratives sweep along with a good balance of dialogue, description and action, and are never boring. "Face to Face" is another good one--tragic again and emotional; you come away with a real sense ... Read More
Rating: - Truly Short, Though Highly Engaging, Stories
This short story collection from Tobias Wolff is truly just that. Each story gives you enough of the bare essentials to keep you informed and invested, but they never cross the line into anything remotely superfluous. Each story feels very much like you've entered right into the middle of things and you are there for the climax, but not necessarily the introduction or the conclusion.
While I found this book to be an effective exercise in the art of the short story, I was even more moved ... Read More
Rating: - Magnificent
I am amazed with everything Tobias Wolff writes.
His fiction is as strong and deep as his non-fiction. In Pharoa's Army is the most profoundly human book I've read on the subject of soldiering in Viet nam.
Rating: - Seriously: Buy the book. Buy them all.
Tobias Wolff writes short stories pertaining to issues such as spousal abuse, envy, and lying. Wolff understands the conflicts his fiction characters face because he has addressed about those personal situations in his memoirs. His fiction is so real, it reads as nonfiction. Buy this book, buy them all. Wolff is an adventuresome author with adventuresome characters, himself included.
Rating: - Characterizations that resonate
The characters in Tobias Wolff's short stories are typically ordinary people in relatively ordinary circumstances yet he creates through them such vivd glimpses of humanity that we recognize our friends ,relatives,neighbors and ourselves in them. Powerful writing that is subtle and yet somehow unforgettable.
All of his short fiction collections are equally enjoyable and I would have a hard time recommending one as opposed to any other. This particular book contains several stories that ... Read More
- Truly Short, Though Highly Engaging, Stories
