From Library Journal
In these stories, which provide a strong vision of the American West, Gallagher guides readers through the lives of loggers, housewives, hairdressers, storytellers, and innocent grocery shoppers. The glimpses are brief, but each story takes us to a special place and offers a unique point of view. As one of Gallagher's characters recollects, "Each of us is in fact the Buddha," and if we would realize this, "we would all treat each other with dignity"?which seems to be the author's approach toward her characters as well. Gallagher is perhaps best known as a poet (e.g., Moon Crossing Bridge, LJ 3/15/92), which shows in her concise, vivid language. Recommended for larger public libraries.?Shannon Williams Haddock, Bellsouth Corporate Lib. & Bus. Research Ctr., Birmingham, Ala.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gallagher's newest short stories--all set in the Northwest and featuring a robust cast of distinctive characters, from chatty hair dressers to thoughtful loggers--possess the precision of poetry and the drama of good screenplays, which comes as no surprise given her adeptness as a poet and her experience cowriting screenplays with Raymond Carver, her late husband. Each tale is notable for the purity of its narrative voice, concreteness of detail, potent evocation of place, and smooth acceleration from the utterly ordinary to the bewilderingly extraordinary. Take "The Leper," for example. A woman is talking to a neurotic artist friend on the phone (much to her husband's annoyance), and rolling out a pie dough, when men begin delivering flowers for a funeral she knows nothing about. Then she looks out the window and (impossibly, mysteriously) sees a herd of horses swimming out to a nearby island. Gallagher turns this series of striking non sequiturs into a fable of resonant emotional truth, a feat she performs to perfection in each gleaming and redeeming story.
Donna Seaman
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
