4/5 stars
What's it about? As bare as they come, this slice of America serves up hard-drinking, hard-loving folks and their myriad violences. Carver lays out these raw tales and doesn’t flinch.
How’d I find it? Some library sale. I may not recall the when or the where, but I remember celebrating the cover of this edition and the smell of its pages, perfectly yellowed and of the pulp variety.
Who will enjoy this book? For fans of the film Birdman and Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, another all-time great story collection.
What stood out? Carver rips out your literary heart and pours himself another bourbon. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a book for writers, a revelation of short fiction. The effortless craft of this book amazed me. Readers, beware: there are no tricks here. If you don’t love the first twenty pages, you’re not going to love the rest of them.
Which line made me feel something? I couldn’t get enough of how the titles of these stories carry so much weight, often some abrupt devastation, exemplified in this parting shot from “The Calm:” “But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber’s chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber’s fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow.”