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Sunday Times
'10 mini masterpieces...writing that is bowstring-taut and carries considerable punch.'
Review
"A glowing gem in Salter's remarkable body of work. "Last Night "should be X-rated, not for its eroticism, although there is that, but to forewarn the uninitiated of its scalding truths about the deceptions and devastations of love . . . Beyond the purity of language and the skill, each story has at its heart an underlying sensibility that treasures each moment of beauty, each burning day . . . Astonishing, haunting, heartbreaking."
-"Los Angeles Times Book Review"
" "
"Sophisticated, refreshing. Evoke[s] John Cheever [in] the flawless cadence of the narrative, the elegance of the style and the way the stories are filled with emotions without ever becoming sentimental . . . Wonderful."
-Cleveland" Plain Dealer"
"Exquisite, pitch-perfect, timeless . . . You can practically smell the cigarette smoke and hear the booze-scratched timbre of Salter's characters' voices . . . In this era of chatter and distraction, Salter's carefully honed stories offer a welcome precision."
-"San Francisco Chronicle"
"The maestro constantly stirs you as you read . . . The sentences alone create a certain breathlessness. Paradise, in Salter's fiction, has always already been lost. Yet the memory of a greener time persists, if only in his prose. While reading it, how happy one is."
-"Chicago Tribune
"
"Terrific fiction, written by an important writer . . . All of these stories share Salter's exquisite prose, his talent for flitting gracefully between points of view, his uncanny ability to sum up a character in a single detail . . . Salter's people are smart, witty, libidinous and romantic, likely to experience their most important personal epiphanies at dinner parties or infashionable restaurants. And almost all of the stories revolve around relationships in one way or another: faltering marriages, missed opportunities and betrayals, past loves resurfacing in unexpected ways. More than that, each of these stories has a secret hidden beneath a seemingly innocuous veneer, a moment at which Salter reveals that everything is not as it seems, [a moment in which] the story pivots on its axis and becomes something altogether richer and more complex . . . In an ideal world, his books would leap from shelf to cash register . . . These stories should be read and savored."
-"Washington Post Book World"
"The ragged tumult of intimacy has long been the province of James Salter, writer of the exquisitely appropriate sentence; the excruciatingly penetrating short story; the impressionistic, incandescent novel. In "A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years" (arguably one of the best novels ever) and "Solo Faces," he has taken the art of fiction into a realm all his own; in "Burning the Days" and "Gods of Tin," he has made nonfiction high art. In his latest, "Last Night," neither his style nor his content flags. He writes with intensity and serious intent, illuminating those places we try to hide, never letting us off the hook . . . Salter is a master at capturing that moment when matters go completely and unexpectedly awry. He then mines that moment for all its beauty, horror, poignancy, love, lust, loss, grief and confusion, and renders it in unforgettable prose."
-"Seattle Times"
"Salter's prose inspires revelations."
-"The New York Post"
"If you put John Updike's short fiction on the Atkins diet for a month, you might end up with something like JamesSalter's lean and powerful new collection, "Last Night. "These stories unfold in the dark flower of relationships one petal at a time. As in Updike's world, Salter's men hold their cards close and keep their women at bay. Old girlfriends, current paramours and the dreams caught up with sexual freedom haunt the husbands of this book. These stories speak to human frailty without fear, and they hint at the way regret lingers around the faithful like fog to a streetlamp."
-"Philadelphia Weekly"
"One of the best, most adult collections to appear in a long while . . . The feelings of Mr. Salter's characters are lean and instantaneous. They deliver minimalist dialog that is more Hollywood than noir . . . Tragedy, then, is not the slow burn of the unfortunate but the sudden tumble of the rich. In several stories, it is a quick, indelible dinner conversation. Even Mr. Salter's prose works by this puncture aesthetic . . . Perhaps this is why so many writers admire Mr. Salter: because he seems to do what he does in a single sentence. But it takes an entire story to smooth out the tablecloth; only then can he stain it."
-"New York Sun"
"In his new collection, James Salter displays the kind of precise mastery of language that has led him to be described as a 'writer's writer.' However, these explorations of love, dreams, disappointment and betrayal show that his insight into universal themes is more than a match for his literary prowess: This stunning collection confirms that he is also undoubtedly a reader's writer. Salter captures the essence of a moment or character using only its sparest elements. Like light striking water at just the right angle, his language makes these storiesshimmer with life . . . He limns the subtle layers of relationships that Hollywood tends to forget; the moments that reach deeper into the heart than histrionic epiphanies and sunset endings because they acknowledge the shadowy illogic of human emotions . . . Salter's characters suffer the unglamorous defeats and disappointments of love. [He] avoids the black-and-white morality of wrong vs. wronged. Instead, he leads us through the inexplicable geography of emotions that lie in between. He navigates the territory with exceptional insight and skill: Bitter or silent, awkward or serene-or as clear and bright as morning light-Salter writes it just the way it is."
-"Rocky Mountain News"
"Splendid . . . Perfectly constructed and marvelously accurate prose portraits . . . Salter gives up the vital facts about his characters slowly, almost on a need-to-know basis. The job of telling what his people are really like is accomplished by peeling off layer after layer of their public face. It is not until the end of the story that we see the full man or woman and often the portrait is much different than what we anticipated . . . [The title story is] a masterpiece . . . Salter's touch is always sure and his words precise. [Each story] rewards us many times over."
-"Newark Star-Ledger"
"One hesitates to use the term "writer's writer," . . But James Salter is a writer's writer, and his latest story collection shows why. Spare, deceptively simple prose like this is hard to come by, and if you read it with a sharp mind, you'll pick up the unexpected curveballs that leave many of Salter's colleagues and acolytes swooning . . . Salter captures his characters in a few short scenes, but each story packs in a lifetime of real feeling. Quiet and genteel though they may be, these people are capable of wicked betrayal, and they aren't jaded to its consequences . . . [Here] we can feel the seductive power of words."
-"Time Out New York
"
"Stories of memory, love, war and the passage of time, how we change and how we don't change, whether there is any connection between our young selves and our older selves . . . You don't just meet his characters as they're living now, but you learn how they looked and lived before . . . The stories are compact, intimate, some born from a single sentence . . . A collection preoccupied with time and legacy."
-"Associated Press"
"James Salter is one of a handful of writers whose name is uniformly uttered in reverence by fellow writers . . . "Last Night "is clearly the work of a writer with the perspective of years, the long view. The stories often focus upon those pivotal moments that, in retrospect, shape a life-missed chances, wrong paths taken, that one opportunity that a character did or didn't take . . . Mysterious and evocative, and utterly beautiful in its language . . . Salter can toss off sentences [that] stop you cold in their lyric precision seemingly at will, two or three on every page . . . What also comes through Salter's fiction is wisdom, earned from a well-lived life."
-"Hartford Courant"
"We sometimes come late to treasure we should have found long ago. For me, it is the writing of James Salter . . . "Last Night "has all of the trademark precision and melody he is known for . . . Elegant . . . In the Salter story, the table will be set, there will be wide doors with curved brass handles, deep armchairs, and Vuillard prints on the walls. The bed linens will be turned back and someone will be in tears . . . Salter is such a paradox to read. On the one hand, you have these pages of pliant and mellifluous prose, as fine and as sumptuous as a seven-course French dinner, hinting at life as comely as those meals. And then you have his characters in all their splendid shambles."
-"The Buffalo News"
"Perhaps this collection of Salter's artful yet definitely embraceable short stories will shake him free of his reputation as a writer's writer. There is nothing wrong, of course, with being someone other writers like to read, but in Salter's case a writer's writer is also someone "anyone "who appreciates good writing would enjoy. There are 10 stories here, and not one fails to showcase his superior talent in the form: his prose style, which is subtle but not abstruse, and his stories' points, which are also subtle, but never vague. He deals in the broad subject of relationships, but . . . finds corners of peculiarity to illuminate. The story 'Comet' [is a] masterpiece. The title story is a tour de force about assisted suicide gone wrong-for several reasons. . . Salter's genius is most apparent in the effectiveness of his short and direct dialogue, which he uses not only to reflect real people talking but also to distill character to sheer essence."
-"Booklist "(starred)
"Matchless narrative economy and
-"Los Angeles Times Book Review"
" "
"Sophisticated, refreshing. Evoke[s] John Cheever [in] the flawless cadence of the narrative, the elegance of the style and the way the stories are filled with emotions without ever becoming sentimental . . . Wonderful."
-Cleveland" Plain Dealer"
"Exquisite, pitch-perfect, timeless . . . You can practically smell the cigarette smoke and hear the booze-scratched timbre of Salter's characters' voices . . . In this era of chatter and distraction, Salter's carefully honed stories offer a welcome precision."
-"San Francisco Chronicle"
"The maestro constantly stirs you as you read . . . The sentences alone create a certain breathlessness. Paradise, in Salter's fiction, has always already been lost. Yet the memory of a greener time persists, if only in his prose. While reading it, how happy one is."
-"Chicago Tribune
"
"Terrific fiction, written by an important writer . . . All of these stories share Salter's exquisite prose, his talent for flitting gracefully between points of view, his uncanny ability to sum up a character in a single detail . . . Salter's people are smart, witty, libidinous and romantic, likely to experience their most important personal epiphanies at dinner parties or infashionable restaurants. And almost all of the stories revolve around relationships in one way or another: faltering marriages, missed opportunities and betrayals, past loves resurfacing in unexpected ways. More than that, each of these stories has a secret hidden beneath a seemingly innocuous veneer, a moment at which Salter reveals that everything is not as it seems, [a moment in which] the story pivots on its axis and becomes something altogether richer and more complex . . . In an ideal world, his books would leap from shelf to cash register . . . These stories should be read and savored."
-"Washington Post Book World"
"The ragged tumult of intimacy has long been the province of James Salter, writer of the exquisitely appropriate sentence; the excruciatingly penetrating short story; the impressionistic, incandescent novel. In "A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years" (arguably one of the best novels ever) and "Solo Faces," he has taken the art of fiction into a realm all his own; in "Burning the Days" and "Gods of Tin," he has made nonfiction high art. In his latest, "Last Night," neither his style nor his content flags. He writes with intensity and serious intent, illuminating those places we try to hide, never letting us off the hook . . . Salter is a master at capturing that moment when matters go completely and unexpectedly awry. He then mines that moment for all its beauty, horror, poignancy, love, lust, loss, grief and confusion, and renders it in unforgettable prose."
-"Seattle Times"
"Salter's prose inspires revelations."
-"The New York Post"
"If you put John Updike's short fiction on the Atkins diet for a month, you might end up with something like JamesSalter's lean and powerful new collection, "Last Night. "These stories unfold in the dark flower of relationships one petal at a time. As in Updike's world, Salter's men hold their cards close and keep their women at bay. Old girlfriends, current paramours and the dreams caught up with sexual freedom haunt the husbands of this book. These stories speak to human frailty without fear, and they hint at the way regret lingers around the faithful like fog to a streetlamp."
-"Philadelphia Weekly"
"One of the best, most adult collections to appear in a long while . . . The feelings of Mr. Salter's characters are lean and instantaneous. They deliver minimalist dialog that is more Hollywood than noir . . . Tragedy, then, is not the slow burn of the unfortunate but the sudden tumble of the rich. In several stories, it is a quick, indelible dinner conversation. Even Mr. Salter's prose works by this puncture aesthetic . . . Perhaps this is why so many writers admire Mr. Salter: because he seems to do what he does in a single sentence. But it takes an entire story to smooth out the tablecloth; only then can he stain it."
-"New York Sun"
"In his new collection, James Salter displays the kind of precise mastery of language that has led him to be described as a 'writer's writer.' However, these explorations of love, dreams, disappointment and betrayal show that his insight into universal themes is more than a match for his literary prowess: This stunning collection confirms that he is also undoubtedly a reader's writer. Salter captures the essence of a moment or character using only its sparest elements. Like light striking water at just the right angle, his language makes these storiesshimmer with life . . . He limns the subtle layers of relationships that Hollywood tends to forget; the moments that reach deeper into the heart than histrionic epiphanies and sunset endings because they acknowledge the shadowy illogic of human emotions . . . Salter's characters suffer the unglamorous defeats and disappointments of love. [He] avoids the black-and-white morality of wrong vs. wronged. Instead, he leads us through the inexplicable geography of emotions that lie in between. He navigates the territory with exceptional insight and skill: Bitter or silent, awkward or serene-or as clear and bright as morning light-Salter writes it just the way it is."
-"Rocky Mountain News"
"Splendid . . . Perfectly constructed and marvelously accurate prose portraits . . . Salter gives up the vital facts about his characters slowly, almost on a need-to-know basis. The job of telling what his people are really like is accomplished by peeling off layer after layer of their public face. It is not until the end of the story that we see the full man or woman and often the portrait is much different than what we anticipated . . . [The title story is] a masterpiece . . . Salter's touch is always sure and his words precise. [Each story] rewards us many times over."
-"Newark Star-Ledger"
"One hesitates to use the term "writer's writer," . . But James Salter is a writer's writer, and his latest story collection shows why. Spare, deceptively simple prose like this is hard to come by, and if you read it with a sharp mind, you'll pick up the unexpected curveballs that leave many of Salter's colleagues and acolytes swooning . . . Salter captures his characters in a few short scenes, but each story packs in a lifetime of real feeling. Quiet and genteel though they may be, these people are capable of wicked betrayal, and they aren't jaded to its consequences . . . [Here] we can feel the seductive power of words."
-"Time Out New York
"
"Stories of memory, love, war and the passage of time, how we change and how we don't change, whether there is any connection between our young selves and our older selves . . . You don't just meet his characters as they're living now, but you learn how they looked and lived before . . . The stories are compact, intimate, some born from a single sentence . . . A collection preoccupied with time and legacy."
-"Associated Press"
"James Salter is one of a handful of writers whose name is uniformly uttered in reverence by fellow writers . . . "Last Night "is clearly the work of a writer with the perspective of years, the long view. The stories often focus upon those pivotal moments that, in retrospect, shape a life-missed chances, wrong paths taken, that one opportunity that a character did or didn't take . . . Mysterious and evocative, and utterly beautiful in its language . . . Salter can toss off sentences [that] stop you cold in their lyric precision seemingly at will, two or three on every page . . . What also comes through Salter's fiction is wisdom, earned from a well-lived life."
-"Hartford Courant"
"We sometimes come late to treasure we should have found long ago. For me, it is the writing of James Salter . . . "Last Night "has all of the trademark precision and melody he is known for . . . Elegant . . . In the Salter story, the table will be set, there will be wide doors with curved brass handles, deep armchairs, and Vuillard prints on the walls. The bed linens will be turned back and someone will be in tears . . . Salter is such a paradox to read. On the one hand, you have these pages of pliant and mellifluous prose, as fine and as sumptuous as a seven-course French dinner, hinting at life as comely as those meals. And then you have his characters in all their splendid shambles."
-"The Buffalo News"
"Perhaps this collection of Salter's artful yet definitely embraceable short stories will shake him free of his reputation as a writer's writer. There is nothing wrong, of course, with being someone other writers like to read, but in Salter's case a writer's writer is also someone "anyone "who appreciates good writing would enjoy. There are 10 stories here, and not one fails to showcase his superior talent in the form: his prose style, which is subtle but not abstruse, and his stories' points, which are also subtle, but never vague. He deals in the broad subject of relationships, but . . . finds corners of peculiarity to illuminate. The story 'Comet' [is a] masterpiece. The title story is a tour de force about assisted suicide gone wrong-for several reasons. . . Salter's genius is most apparent in the effectiveness of his short and direct dialogue, which he uses not only to reflect real people talking but also to distill character to sheer essence."
-"Booklist "(starred)
"Matchless narrative economy and
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
James Salter is a quietly legendary figure in American literature, almost an insider secret for those whose stock in trade is the use of words. One has the impression that he is read and admired almost exclusively by other writers. This, his latest book, sees him returning to the form of short stories, his first collection published since the PEN/ Faulkner award winning Dusk and other stories in 1989. Salter has long been regarded a master of sparse, measured and bewilderingly beautiful prose. He can, as was once said, break your heart with a sentence. In interviews, Salter has spoken about the exactitude with which he writes - playing sentences over and over, measuring them against a rigorous internal standard. Yet it is always prose full of immediacy, the time spent choosing fitting words repays the effort not with a weightiness but instead with a clear lightness of touch.
Salter is not the most prolific of writers - having written for short of a half century he has produced only five novels, a collection of short stories and his autobiography (there have also been film scripts). The publication of a new work is something to be greeted with excitement, albeit a rather quiet excitement. It is a shame, then, that Last Night should disappoint.
The stories in Last Night feature characters that are almost exclusively upper middle class, white, East coast Americans. Salter is trying to tell us something about them, and about himself as a part of them. They are intelligent, well schooled, always cultured and knowing. Lives are polite, correct, appearances are important. The marriages portrayed are long standing but never happy - they are artefacts of convention, the romance in them long suffocated. There is the constant sense that lives could, or should, have been lived differently but never were. Each protagonist is a failure in his or her own light - they were never brave enough. Core to each story is impropriety, adultery. Each protagonist is either narratively engaged in adultery or guiltlessly holding onto memories of fleeting, illicit romances they once had. We are shown over and over again that it is only in those moments that the protagonists ever touch upon something transcendent, something bigger and infinitely more real than the constricting social constructions of their daily lives. This impropriety is shown to be a psychological crutch, grasped with both hands - the protagonists are never oblivious to the implications and the damage done, but are found instead to be passive to it.
The younger characters are almost ciphers. They are as skittish and fickle as they are tempting and engaged. It is hard to tell if this is how Salter genuinely perceives young people or if instead we are seeing them only through the prismic distortions of the older protagonist's need of them. They promise much but are always by the end of the story bored, moving on, leaving quietly broken protagonists in their wake.
Salter is a bleak writer, perhaps very truthful, or perhaps instead a writer willing a universality to his own predicament. Perhaps by creating characters that act and think like him, by creating a universal law stating that all men in middle age are unhappy and crave impropriety, he excuses or comforts himself. Either way, this is not new territory for Salter - all of his books mine similar seams. Yet here, as distinct from earlier books, there exists a sense of fatigue, of fatigue in the quality of prose. Salter at his poorest is still a match for any writer in the English language, however there are moments in his previous works that leave one breathless with wonder at his talent. In earlier books, most notably A Sport and a Pastime, and Light Years, there were perhaps two or three passages in each chapter that could stand out as some of the loveliest use of words or choice of metaphor in the English language. Here, the tone is inescapably Salter's and the cadence as precise as ever, but the writing seems to lack the rigour that we look to him for. Less energy has gone into this work. As a sculptor of prose the reader has the impression that Salter holds the chisel less assuredly in his old age.
Last night differs from Dusk and other stories, not just in that it is less well written, but also in that it is more explicit, more obvious. The stories in Dusk end ambiguously, strangely sometimes. The reader is left with a sense of having been somewhere, of having been privy to a mind that won't let up all of its secrets, its workings. The first story in Dusk, Am Strande von Tanger, ends: 'Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.' The Cinema ends: 'His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.'
Yet taking as an example, Last Night's My Lord You (probably the best and most poignant of the stories) which ends: 'probably he was forgotten, but not by her.' It may seem a petty difference and some may applaud the simplicity of such an ending but its resonance is limited by it. The sentiment of the piece is tied up, neatly packaged (she won't forget him), ultimately there is nothing to dwell on. Now, rather than let his protagonists' feelings become known to us through crafted observation, Salter just tells us. Other stories in the collection begin and end in a similar fashion. The prose, shorn of the use of metaphor for resonance, becomes rather more a collected statement of facts about people's lives. This is very much unlike Salter whose Light Years (his greatest work) he described as being like a still life - we the reader are to watch, not be directly privy to the lives portrayed. Last Night is filled with statements directly explaining protagonists' inner thoughts, and by doing this Salter betrays his lack of energy.
For those looking to be introduced to James Salter, look instead to A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years - they are better written, more potent with a love of words. For those that are fans already, by all means add the book to your collection, but place it on the shelf next to his lesser works like The Hunters, or Solo Faces. You might as well place it on a harder to reach shelf for it is unlikely you will reach for it as often as his greatest works - it is not a book that repays returning to time and again.
It is an extraordinary thing to criticise a very good book for not being mesmerising, yet Salter is held in my very highest esteem because of what he is capable of. In this collection there are only a few glimpses of his brilliance and the consequence is that a very bleak book finally has little to lighten it, to make it an unequivocally human endeavour.
Salter is not the most prolific of writers - having written for short of a half century he has produced only five novels, a collection of short stories and his autobiography (there have also been film scripts). The publication of a new work is something to be greeted with excitement, albeit a rather quiet excitement. It is a shame, then, that Last Night should disappoint.
The stories in Last Night feature characters that are almost exclusively upper middle class, white, East coast Americans. Salter is trying to tell us something about them, and about himself as a part of them. They are intelligent, well schooled, always cultured and knowing. Lives are polite, correct, appearances are important. The marriages portrayed are long standing but never happy - they are artefacts of convention, the romance in them long suffocated. There is the constant sense that lives could, or should, have been lived differently but never were. Each protagonist is a failure in his or her own light - they were never brave enough. Core to each story is impropriety, adultery. Each protagonist is either narratively engaged in adultery or guiltlessly holding onto memories of fleeting, illicit romances they once had. We are shown over and over again that it is only in those moments that the protagonists ever touch upon something transcendent, something bigger and infinitely more real than the constricting social constructions of their daily lives. This impropriety is shown to be a psychological crutch, grasped with both hands - the protagonists are never oblivious to the implications and the damage done, but are found instead to be passive to it.
The younger characters are almost ciphers. They are as skittish and fickle as they are tempting and engaged. It is hard to tell if this is how Salter genuinely perceives young people or if instead we are seeing them only through the prismic distortions of the older protagonist's need of them. They promise much but are always by the end of the story bored, moving on, leaving quietly broken protagonists in their wake.
Salter is a bleak writer, perhaps very truthful, or perhaps instead a writer willing a universality to his own predicament. Perhaps by creating characters that act and think like him, by creating a universal law stating that all men in middle age are unhappy and crave impropriety, he excuses or comforts himself. Either way, this is not new territory for Salter - all of his books mine similar seams. Yet here, as distinct from earlier books, there exists a sense of fatigue, of fatigue in the quality of prose. Salter at his poorest is still a match for any writer in the English language, however there are moments in his previous works that leave one breathless with wonder at his talent. In earlier books, most notably A Sport and a Pastime, and Light Years, there were perhaps two or three passages in each chapter that could stand out as some of the loveliest use of words or choice of metaphor in the English language. Here, the tone is inescapably Salter's and the cadence as precise as ever, but the writing seems to lack the rigour that we look to him for. Less energy has gone into this work. As a sculptor of prose the reader has the impression that Salter holds the chisel less assuredly in his old age.
Last night differs from Dusk and other stories, not just in that it is less well written, but also in that it is more explicit, more obvious. The stories in Dusk end ambiguously, strangely sometimes. The reader is left with a sense of having been somewhere, of having been privy to a mind that won't let up all of its secrets, its workings. The first story in Dusk, Am Strande von Tanger, ends: 'Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.' The Cinema ends: 'His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.'
Yet taking as an example, Last Night's My Lord You (probably the best and most poignant of the stories) which ends: 'probably he was forgotten, but not by her.' It may seem a petty difference and some may applaud the simplicity of such an ending but its resonance is limited by it. The sentiment of the piece is tied up, neatly packaged (she won't forget him), ultimately there is nothing to dwell on. Now, rather than let his protagonists' feelings become known to us through crafted observation, Salter just tells us. Other stories in the collection begin and end in a similar fashion. The prose, shorn of the use of metaphor for resonance, becomes rather more a collected statement of facts about people's lives. This is very much unlike Salter whose Light Years (his greatest work) he described as being like a still life - we the reader are to watch, not be directly privy to the lives portrayed. Last Night is filled with statements directly explaining protagonists' inner thoughts, and by doing this Salter betrays his lack of energy.
For those looking to be introduced to James Salter, look instead to A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years - they are better written, more potent with a love of words. For those that are fans already, by all means add the book to your collection, but place it on the shelf next to his lesser works like The Hunters, or Solo Faces. You might as well place it on a harder to reach shelf for it is unlikely you will reach for it as often as his greatest works - it is not a book that repays returning to time and again.
It is an extraordinary thing to criticise a very good book for not being mesmerising, yet Salter is held in my very highest esteem because of what he is capable of. In this collection there are only a few glimpses of his brilliance and the consequence is that a very bleak book finally has little to lighten it, to make it an unequivocally human endeavour.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
These stories - mostly of infidelity with unusual twists - have wide-ranging, semi-glamorous settings: the military, LA TV people, Wall Street dealers, literary types, New York high-lifers... People in this comfortable world say, 'He was a poet, of course', and go off 'with a man named Rodriguez who owned some beauty parlours'; in particular, middle-aged men are liable to risk it all for sights like 'the faint trace of bones like pearls that ran down her smooth back'. Smooth female beauty ('Ardis possessed extraordinary skin, luminous and smooth, a skin so pure that to touch it would make one tremble') is everywhere, alongside mild irony ('it had been a while since Adele had married'), judicious similes ('She was a kind of cheap goddess') and poised, weighted and classy paragraphs and dialogue (too long to quote, but just open the book anywhere)... If a good short-story, for me, is easy to get into, makes you inhabit the characters' worlds quickly, surprises you, and ends just at the right time and in the right way, then these fit the template beautifully. Something really subtle and hard-worked is going on, making them so fine that I'll even forgive them their patrician tastefulness. I'd definitely read more by this writer. Any recommendations?
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I found these short stories pretty much uniformly compelling. Salter's characters are driven by force of circumstance - approaching death, the visit of a former lover offering a second chance, and so on - to reflect on the meanings of their lives - and generally in these stories the roles that love has played in those lives - as a compelling force for good or ill - often a compelling force over just a short period in a long life.
This collection was, for me, much more consistent than Dusk, a further collection of Salter short stories which has some stories just as powerful as these, but where I found the collection more variable.
This collection was, for me, much more consistent than Dusk, a further collection of Salter short stories which has some stories just as powerful as these, but where I found the collection more variable.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Compelling art
A superbly original collection. I marvel at Salter's literary imagination and his economical, but lyrical prose. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2007 by Flibertigibbit
Beautiful and moving and haunting
Perfect tales in perfect prose; like drops of molten metal, flashing and burning. 'My Lord You': a story that will stay with me forever. Please buy this collection.
Published on 12 Jun 2007 by pencil
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