About this title: Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain" (in her first volume of Wyoming Stories) and Bad Dirt (her second), National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winner Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral new collection.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 2008-09-09
ISBN-13:9781416571667ISBN:1416571663
Description: New. Book is Brand New, Gift condition. Free tracking # included! International buyers are welcome. We ship every business day. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781416590330ISBN:1416590331
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. Hardcover with dust jacket, Very Good, clean, tight, unmarked, a cut slit that goes through the spine DJ of the book, other than that it's a pretty new book. All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner, New York
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781416571667ISBN:1416571663
Description: Fine in Fine dust jacket. 1416571663. A collection of nine western-themed tales by the National Book Award-and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Brokeback Mountain features an array of pioneer country inhabitants from different backgrounds. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780007269747ISBN:0007269749
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 240 pages. The fantastic new collection of stories from the pulitzer prize-winning author of 'the sh1pping news' and 'brokeback mountain'. (Paperback) read more
"Proulx is a master. Her sentences are pure pleasure and her sense of place and character unerring. Especially the last, and longest of the stories, from which the title is taken, really moved me---the story of a broken and dirt-poor Wyoming family, a girl raised by her hard-assed grandparents after her "bad-girl" mom disappears. Dakota is her name, and she winds up in Iraq. There is an intense present-sense, mixed with a panoramic telescoping of the past that explains how our characters got where they are, and its amazing. Just like in Brokeback, where a brush stroke and a deft transition tell everything. I did NOT like several stories, fantasies really, about the devil and his attempt to punish humanity. Technically stylish, but irritating and uninteresting to me, I would have skipped them had I not been listening on audio in the car."
"The stories collected here are hit or miss. I really enjoy her tales of the hardscrabble life on the prairie, but a couple of the stories had me rolling my eyes, as they seemed to belong in a Stephen King collection instead. Aside from that, her characters are vividly drawn, as if she were eavesdropping on her neighbors in Wyoming. And she has a keen skill for describing the flat land, the endless sky and the cruel weather on the plains. A couple of the stories seemed a little rushed, as though she were skipping over the boring details to get the tragic ending. And no one does a tragic ending better than Annie Proulx. But when she takes her time, her attention to those little details make her stories worth reading."
"Fine Just the Way It Is, is Annie Proulx's second return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast are, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals; frisky female residents of a nursing home vie for "the favors of palsied men with beef jerky arms"; ranch hands and their families suffer hardship beyond endurance; and, bereft of children, a woman nurtures sagebrush.
Proulx's writing is exhilarating and unflagging in its brilliance. A mistress of chronicling the everyday, she transforms its mundanity into something fine that startles, unsettles, and enchants. Though their setting is frequently bleak and tragic, the stories are also relaxing because they are faultless. There is beauty, cruelty, absurdity, and humour in her stories, all presented with Proulx's characteristic lack of hyperbole and with the confidence that befits a storyteller of the highest calibre."
"In different stories, both the Devil speaking of Hell and Wyoming natives speaking of their way of life state that everything is "fine just the way it is." Make of that what you will.
For a while, I wondered if I'd made a mistake by reading the collection of short stories in one go. You get accustomed to the worst happening in story and after story, and it seemed they were losing their power. Then, you get to the last, and you find the progression didn't numb you after all, and that it make sense because it makes the last story and the whole work all the more powerful."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
