What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Ratings76
Average rating4
I just want to express how fucking inspirational and magnetic Raymond Carver's prose is. This compilation specifically got me through high school in a way that I've been impressed with how stoic, yet powerful this guy manages to make from certain mundane situations. Tonally concise, heavily suburban, it's so difficult to replicate his writing style without coming off as a knock-off or a discount. Just simply gorgeous to read and imagine.
Holiday tensions
don't ruin the fishing trip
get some on the side.
Cheesy option: Love is like a fishstrive to keep your pond well-stockedlose it anyway.
‘There was this funny thing that anything could happen now that we realized everything had.'
Although these stories make me deeply melancholy in a way I can't quite describe, I feel like that's probably the point, and they do it so well. Carver's style of prose is so clear and precise, and can say so much with so few words.
I've never really read short stories before. This took me a while to get through (maybe because each time I go back i'm entering a new world?)
Some more enticing than others. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (the second last story) was my favourite. Reminded me of a short film. A lot of these stories actually made me think of scene work for actors, so in that sense it felt incredibly useful.
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Why the hell this book has 4.23 stars while Alice Munro's Dear Life only has 3.7 I refuse to understand. I finished this and honestly don't remember a single story or image. Reading it wasn't bad, but became a monotony of “how will this couple break up?” Go read Alice Munro. I care when her couples break up.
Favorites: • “Viewfinder” • “I Could See the Smallest Things” • “So Much Water So Close to Home” • “The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off” • “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”
Profound in their simplicity, Carver's stories will remain with me for the rest of my life. Phenomenal collection.
really a solid little collection which I think should be followed by “What we Talk about when we talk about doughnuts” which is a shouts and murmers in a new yorker from sometime ago.