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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
 
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Paperback)

by Raymond Carver (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.39 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love + Cathedral + Will You Please be Quiet, Please?
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  • This item: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

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  • Cathedral by Raymond Carver

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Product details

  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (3 Jul 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099449846
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099449843
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 1.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 42,979 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #4 in  Books > Fiction > Short Stories > Classic Short Story Authors > Carver, Raymond
    #5 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Carver, Raymond

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Product Description

Review

'One of America's most original, truest voices' Salman Rushdie


Product Description

This powerful collection of stories, set in the mid-west among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK. With its spare, colloquial narration and razor-sharp sense of how people really communicate, the collection was to become one of the most influential literary works of the 1980's.
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
81% buy the item featured on this page:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love 3.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£5.39
Where I'm Calling from: Selected Stories
7% buy
Where I'm Calling from: Selected Stories 4.9 out of 5 stars (14)
£9.06
Cathedral
5% buy
Cathedral 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£4.99
Will You Please be Quiet, Please?
4% buy
Will You Please be Quiet, Please? 4.8 out of 5 stars (4)
£4.99
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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4 star:
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An American Classic, 31 Jul 2005
Short stories are one of my favourite forms, and Carver is masterful. His sparse prose reminds me of Hemingway, and his characters - all struggling with their own small-town psychoses - hit you directly from the page. I'm not the biggest fan of American literature, to be honest, but embarked on my first experience of Carver after recommendations from a friend (who is a huge fan). Carver's stories wheedle their way into your consciousness. His portraits of everyday yet remarkable people are sharp and linger long after the few pages devoted to each tale. There's still something cerebral rather than emotional about the stories, but this alienation is part of the package. If you want to see beautiful craftsmanship and feel in the mood to take the wry, sometimes deeply sad, stories of failed promise or everday accident, then Carver is a rewarding experience.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Haiku prose, 11 May 2009
Again, I might well be arriving late to the party, and maybe the food might all be gone, but I still feel it worth attending and seeing if I can't find something.
I found Carver via Murakami's 'Birthday Stories', where, having been impressed by 'The Bath', I decided to dig further and seek other works. Now, having read 'What we talk about...' I can only say three things;
i) Brilliant! Carver is a literary genius who occupies rare ground,
ii) Original. He re-wrote the short-story, he invented, re-invented the short-story,
iii) More! I want more! I want to read every word he wrote, I am thirsty for his world vision.
Carver's style, his vision, his world-view optimises what makes American literature great, and what is great American literature. After reading this I was reminded just how good modern American literature really is - there is not a country on this planet who has a definite modern style as beautiful, clean and expressive as America. People often say that Jazz is the only true American Art, but I disagree! To that I would also add the short-story! America has a rich and unchallenged history in the short story and it must surely be at least partly attributable to the likes of Raymond Carver.

Many readers have commented that 'nothing happens'... NOTHING HAPPENS? Things happen, lots happens, it's just, like life, things happen quickly - who could forget the three page masterpiece 'Popular Mechanics'? Where Carver's real genius lies is that he really is a master storyteller, that is to say he paints a sparse picture and challenges the reader to fill in the blanks, to use THEIR imagination to join the dots. He is not a spoon-feeder, rather he is like a Haiku poet, he strips everything down to the bare minimum and what is not said, but what is inferred is the point, that is what is most important. And that is his real strength and the expression of his pure genius. Anyone can babble on and on and on for pages, or tell as story like a drunk in a bar, very few can whittle an entire tree down to one single clothes-peg, Carver can, and did.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Over-rated, 13 Oct 2009
Well, I am a big fan of the short story genre, and was looking forward to reading this collection as I have heard so many positive things about it. I have to say that I was very disappointed. The stories themselves are reasonably well written, but what I found difficult to stomach was that there seemed to be nothing that lay beneath them, they seemed purposeless. To this extent they reminded me of John Cheever's work which I have also struggled with in the past. If you are interested in something deeper, I would signpost you on to Alice Munro, Alistair Macleod or even William Maxwell. Although Carver's stories were an easy read, I finished the text wondering what the point was and I felt that they said nothing about life. I finished the book a couple of days ago, and already in my mind I cannot think of any stories that stood out. Disappointing.
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