Customer Reviews

Nebraska: Stories

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Ron Hansen has written of of the most evocative short stories I have ever read. The whole book is wonderful but "Wickedness" is so good it would be worth buying just to have that story alone.

I can only think of Barbara Kingsolver as someone whose imagery can compare to Ron Hansen's. I just love the literary images he comes up with. Nebraska is a collection of short stories, all very different from each other. My favorites:

"Wickedness": winters in Nebraska can be brutal, but January of 1888 will go down in history. The weather was pure wickedness. The story is a collage of small stories. It opens on a train, where a young teacher, on her way to Nebraska, shares the ride with a poor carpenter who lost his limbs and ears to frostbite. It continues with a variety of sad and happy endings. My favorite was the one about the pony in charge of delivering a message to parents who did not know where their child was.

"True Romance": another great story, very allegorical, about a mysterious evil force that kills cows in a particularly gruesome way. Don't want to spoil the ending, but I certainly did not see it coming.

"Red-Letter Days": an old man, avid golfer, recovering alcoholic, retired lawyer, keeps a diary. If you thought that diaries were only for teenage girls, think again. So sweet, so moving the feelings that he can pour on those pages.