Proulx has a very unique writing style. Sometimes her images make me say "yes, yes!!!" and sometimes they make me cringe. She excels at setting. I don't feel that I really understand her characters and their motivations very well, and plot is not much of a consideration in many of the stories -- it kind of takes a back seat to setting, word choice, and characterization.

I didn't mind reading this book, but didn't love and devour it either. And while I would read Proulx again, I am also in no particular hurry to do so. So kind of a middle of the road reading experience for me.

Reserving for the General Literature VBB.

Description from Amazon:

"Before she wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx was already producing some of the finest short fiction in the country. Here are her collected stories, including two new works never before anthologized.

These stories reverberate with rural tradition, the rites of nature, and the rituals of small-town life. The country is blue-collar New England; the characters are native families and the dispossessed working class, whose heritage is challenged by the neorural bourgeoisie from the city; and the themes are as elemental as the landscape: revenge, malice, greed, passion. Told with skill and profundity and crafted by a master storyteller, these are lean, tough tales of an extraordinary place and its people."

This is headed out to msjoanna, who selected it from the General Literature VBB. Enjoy!

Thanks for sharing this. I've been wanting to read more of her short stories.