LOVE IS THE CROOKED THING [Paperback]

LEE K. ABBOTT (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Human love in a variety of quirky manifestations is the subject of these 11 short stories. Abbott, whose first collection, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, won the St. Lawrence Award, dazzles with verbal pyrotechnics but does not necessarily illuminate in his variations on familiar themes: love recollected by grunts in Vietnam; love of father and son; love, or what passes for it, in a Greyhound bus station. Most of the stories, set in the border state of New Mexico, are redolent of downhome insularity, peopled with extravagantly named, raffish characters whose expressive diction often fails to communicate. This is the third book in the publisher's Bright Leaf Short Fiction series.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 182 pages
• Publisher: Ohio State University Press (June 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814207138
• ISBN-13: 978-0814207130
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,290,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lee Abbott is a master of the American short story., July 28, 1998

By 

[e-mail] -- Darin Strauss (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LOVE IS THE CROOKED THING (Paperback)

Abbott's collection of stories never drags; each piece is a gem, each begins as the action starts, and goes on to reveal the most telling facts of character in artful ways. Perhaps because of his abundant humor, Abbot has been called a "maximalist," but that is not fair, really--because that implies a man of messy technique, someone who throws words on the page willy-nilly. He is as careful with his words as is any good writer. He just has style.