Short stories are something I don't read a lot of. In spire of this, I do enjoy a good short story and there's definitely an art to them. Indeed, I suggested it as a possible category for this very challenge, but the idea was vetoed. On my mental reading list for a long time now has been to give this area some love and in particular some love to Raymond Carver, as his reputation as a master of his craft preceded him.
And for my birthday I was served What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. As it transpires, what we talk about is an awful lot of things. And of everything about his writing, which was sharp, direct and spare (excellent, in other words), his dialogue was brilliant. It captured the way people really speak and interact. Each story (and some were very short indeed) worked as a snapshot and despite the lack of links between them, there was certainly an overall feel to them, a flavour, a sense of place.
So basically I liked it just as much as I thought I would, which is pretty hard to complain about when I had pretty high expectations in the first place. I will definitely look to try some more, Carver's canon is not large, and then I shall move on to other short stories. David Vann has been mentioned in the same breath and I liked Caribou Island from way back over Easter, so watch this space...
Book number: 94
Title: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Author: Raymond Carver
Category: Chris' choice
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