Customer Reviews

Out of the Woods: Stories

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Presently you won't see Chris Offutt's name on any bestseller's list, but please don't let that discourage you from reading his wonderful work. In "Out of the Woods," Offutt follows the lives of ex-cons, alcoholics, gamblers, and drifters as they struggle to find direction and purpose.

Offutt's characters share one common thread, they were all born and raised in Appalachian communities in Kentucky. Reared in a culture in and of itself, these Kentuckians face harsh realities as they try to carve out a path for themselves in mainstream America. Most grapple with a strong desire to get out and see the world yet simultaneously they fight the urge to return to the comfort and security of home. In "Moscow, Idaho," a young prisoner on grave digging duty aims to turn over a new leaf and wonders if he will ever find a woman, a good job, and a town to settle in. "Two-Eleven All Around" is the story of a man who is so desperate for attention from his girlfriend, that he stages his own arrest in hope that she will hear about it while listening to her radio. These tales combine perseverance and heartbreak into poetic prose.

There have been comparisons of Offutt's writing to that of Raymond Carver's. Only in my opinion, Offutt is better. Carver's characters tend to present with a flat affect, but Offutt is able to take the reader subtly and deeply into his characters minds. Chris Offutt excels at what he writes about because he lived the life of his characters. He grew up in a small Appalachian community and at the age of nineteen he meandered across the country where he went through more than fifty jobs before returning to home and raising a family. Chris Offutt has come full circle and there is no doubt that he will find himself a place in the world of literature.

Chris Offutt is a great short-story writer. You come out of a story of his thinking you have just read something small and simple, and it isn't until some time later that you realize what you've really been shown: a true emotional panorama, drawn with the most clear and efficient of lines; a sort of semantic loaves-and-fishes, where a comprehensive truth has been packed into an impossibly small space. Offutt has got a highly selective, quietly explosive palette; words you use a hundred times a day are coiled into powerfully emotive combinations. His characters are tack-sharp and of few words, and when they speak they seem to do it with the weight of heroes. Offutt's written a lot of good things, but the short story is presently where he's at his most powerful, and some of his best are in "Out of the Woods," particularly the title story, and "Melungeons," and "Tough People."

This book of stories rivals Denis johnson's Jesus' Son as oneof the most compelling books of stories written in the last decade.Economically written and darkly funny, not one word is wasted. And the landscapes are etched with a painter's flare for light and form. I've read Mr. Offut's novel and memoir and they are very good. But this book is truly original, an example of how much promise the short story as a significant art form in 2000 and beyond.

In an authentic voice from the hills of Eastern Kentucky, Offutt tells of the people who leave home, but can't quite leave the hills behind. Men who long to go home, but can not or who long to leave and need to stay. His bare-boned prose looks us straight in the eye and doesn't blink. Offutt has proven himself a remarkably versatile writer with Out of the Woods, his second collection of short stories--the first being Kentucky Straight--following a memoir (The Same River Twice) and a novel (The Good Brother). We can only hope that he continues to provide us with more.

Chris Offutt newest collection of short stories reach directly to the heart of loneliness, displacement, searching for place. His writing is so deceptively simple. It's as if he sat on a stump in the afternoon sun, down in a hollow somewhere, and just scratched out these wonderful tales with a #2 pencil on a piece of construction paper. They seem effortless, which indicates how much effort and care went into them. Surprising how much he reminds me of Larry Brown, but is unique. He's got a gift for storytelling, and avoids those ambiguous endings that are too much the vogue. You know where you are, you know where the characters stand. As a Kentuckian who lives in New York, I know he's got the voice and the feelings dead right.

It's been a long time since I've read-- and re-read and re-read again-- a book that affected me as deeply as "Out of the Woods." It is beautiful story-telling, and I am grateful that someone with his gifts also has the access to share them with us. As a reader of fiction, I am not concerned with "authenticity" or "verification"; I am simply concerned with reading a good story. Thank you, Chris Offutt.

Because I love short stories and Southern writers, I discovered Chris Offutt. Out of the Woods was his first book I read. It won't be the last. His fiction is serious, his characters haunting. Haunting because of the writer's honesty. Offutt turns on the overhead light and throws off the sheet. His protagonist in "Two-Eleven All Around" sums up all of his characters when he ponders, "Sometimes I don't think I've done anything to leave my mark in this world. I'm the kind of person the world leaves a mark on." Offutt has left his mark.

Ain't no such thing as a perfect story no matter how masterful the crafter is. That's what art is, I guess. It's the "imperfections" - maybe the particularities, the quirks and indiosicracies - which strick you in that very personal way like the writer is writing for you and you want to shake the hand which wrote that tale, which made your life a little better just now and you really want to say - thanks! After awhile, if the work is good, you don't feel like you're reading some book. This guy, Offut, is actually a very ordinary proser. It seems. Seemingly, not that much extraordinary stuff is going on. No sense of immediate beauty or anything like that. He writes as if he's one with the tale being told. There's this intimacy here, OUT OF THE WOODS, like you don't get in many places. He honors - people, life, words, and the putting together of. That's what I think. Some phrases jump at you with a real live human voice. ("I'm going with Jack," she said. "I'm sorry." - in TOUGH PEOPLE) ("What the f--- do you want?" - in TWO-ELEVEN ALL AROUND) I've been keeping these sentences in me for awhile and as corny as this sounds, they make me want to be a better person.

If you like southern writers like Larry Brown, Harry Crews, Flannery O'Connor, even Faulkner, you'll like Chris Offutt. This book of stories was a fun ride.

A multi-part meditation on leaving and returning home, Offutt's book antropomorphizes the hills of Eastern Kentucky into a brooding, lonely, demanding mistress. The crisp, sparce style of Offutt's prose allows the sense of longing and loss at the core of his work to be expressed in the white space, in what's not said. The true emotions of his characters are not explicit but instead evoked by a weed choked lawn or the deepening shadows of late afternoon. I have never been to Eastern Kentucky but after this book I have a diamond sharp image of it in my mind.