The Lives of Rocks [Hardcover]

Rick Bass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2006

Rick Bass's new collection contains a broad range of characters and settings: the title story concerns a woman recovering from cancer; "Pagans" tells, at forty years' distance, of a girl and two boys -- one of whom was in love with her -- and the dangerous games they played; in "Her First Elk," a woman reflects on her first elk hunt and on her memories of her father and two brothers, now all dead. These stories, distinguished by their maturity, are narrated by men and women with compelling life tales. Filled with Bass's hallmark lean and beautiful prose, they are further proof of his mastery of the short fiction form.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Nature is as much a character in this sterling collection of 10 short stories as are any of the oddly off-center but otherwise endearing people who inhabit it. Bass writes with concern about the environment (Caribou Rising), and that same passion infuses his fiction (The Hermit's Story). In "Titan" a man recalls an awesome and awful day in his boyhood when freshwater rivers and streams, engorged by sudden heavy rains, surged into the ocean off the Alabama coast, stunning saltwater fish so they could be scooped up by the thousands. The teenage boys of "Pagans" squeeze inside a diving bell to plunge into a river so polluted it bursts into flame; in "Fiber," a former writer and environmental activist gathers deadfall trees and, as the "log fairy," sneaks the best onto the trucks of other wildcat loggers so they'll cut down fewer trees. And in the elegiac title story, a geologist weak from cancer treatments relies on children from a rigidly fundamentalist family for winter wood; they are happy to help, until she teaches them that the Earth is millions of years old. These graceful stories are connected through Bass's invocation of elemental forces, but at the same time each is deliciously distinct. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Bass draws on his geological expertise to ground his latest collection of stop-in-your-tracks short stories on a bedrock of realism only to have his wild-hearted characters race off to realms surreal and mythic. In "Pagans," three teens use an abandoned construction crane on a polluted river to create art out of junk and test their courage. In "Goats," two friends want to be ranchers, but their calves routinely escape. Bass meshes wit with an elegiac sensibility to capture the dark ambience of a world besieged by rampant desecration and destruction. His jittery and desperate characters struggle with desire, sorrow, and fear; intending to help each other, they are, instead, helpless. Bedeviled men and women are inextricably connected to the land, from the "treacherous shifting Yazoo clay of Mississippi" to the snowy mountains of Montana, the setting for two unforgettable linked tales about a resolute and resourceful woman, modes of survival, and the majestic cycles of existence. Embedded in each paradoxical story is Bass' perception of everything from a rock to an elk, an egret, a woman, and a tree as a precious "carrier of life" on a planet graced with a "topography of spirit." Compassionate and hard-hitting, knowledgeable and transcendent, Bass is essential. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (November 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618596747
• ISBN-13: 978-0618596744
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.8 x 6.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,308,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great reading but a little dark, January 17, 2007

By 

Robert Gewecke (Chelmsford, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lives of Rocks (Hardcover)

I've read most of what Rick Bass has written and look forward to anything new that comes out about the Yaak Valley. This collection of stories, mostly short but one long, covers Montana, Texas and maybe a couple other states too. All are worthwhile.

What struck me though was that for the first time I found a common thread of love lost/life lost that I had not noticed before. Maybe it was there in the earlier writings, but I hadn't seen it. This time, in Lives of Rocks, there are some truly heartbreaking scenes, especially in the title story, where what could have been is rather forcefully struck down and replaced by a future that looks to be much more prosaic than the wonderful interactions between the characters that have taken place.

A friend of mine is a full-out supporter of the "bleak is beautiful" concept in novels, to the extent that he is reading Bleak House now and loving it. I have difficulty enjoying bleak novels, and this collection of stories is not bleak, but perhaps somewhat tragic, and as one of the Greek writers I was exposed to in high school said, tragedy allows us to experience emotions that we might not otherwise feel.


This, then, is a collection of stories that is good for you, even though many are sad.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Friends we wished we had, October 21, 2006

By 

D. Busch (Corpus Christi) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lives of Rocks (Hardcover)

Classic Rick Bass. Now of course I read them in South Texas instead of Alaska so stories like "Pagans" really hit me where I live. Always in the Bass stories, I find people I wished I had known and events that I wouldn't have missed. The best characters since "Platte River" are here.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bass just gets better, February 2, 2007

By 

Donald R. Emery (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lives of Rocks (Hardcover)

If you liked Rick Bass' earlier writing, this collection will ratchet your appreciation even higher. Along with McGuane, Ivan Doig and the other "Stegner School" of writers, Bass creates a human condition and a sense of place with prose that touches your heart. And with this writing, place moves out of the west with no loss of impact. Sentences garb you and make you reread them just for the sheer pleasue of their compact, lyrical beauty. I just finished it and will reread it for no other reason than to experience it once again.