A Primitive Heart: Stories [Hardcover]

David Rabe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2005

A powerful, moving collection of stories from one of the masters of American drama, A Primitive Heart is a powerful, heart-rending, and completely authentic collection of stories that cut to the quick of American manhood and reveal the distance within the most intimate relationships. A Primitive Heart shows David Rabe to be a fiction writer of range and versatility. Whether he is writing about a marriage shadowed by the unacknowledged discord of a risky pregnancy, a group of men whose attempt to settle an account launches them toward unexpected violence, or a young journalist who believes he’s escaped his Catholic roots, only to be forced to confront them by a priest who once mentored his writing, Rabe’s muscular voice, singular gift for dialogue, sly wit, and fearlessness in depicting the savage side of humanity, tenders an inimitable portrait of America and offers benedictions to her lost souls. A Primitive Heart confirms the mastery of David Rabe's writing and establishes him as an exciting voice in fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Playwright Rabe (Hurlyburly, etc.), in this collection, navigates the troubled lives of men set adrift by economic hopelessness, traumatic childhoods and their own inability to connect. The narrator of the title story becomes obsessed with the development of his unborn child, even as he drifts further apart from his strong-willed wife. "Veranda" describes both the failed beginning of a new relationship and a failed attempt to make amends to a child for the end of an old one. "Holy Men" and "Some Loose Change" stand out as powerful evocations of contemporary manhood, the former in a successful writer's fraught reunion with the Catholic priest who mentored him, the latter through the attempts of a group of boozy dot-com casualties to even an old financial score. "Early Madonna," the only story with a female protagonist, features an aging club kid attempting to escape the shadow of her brainy younger sister. Abstracted inner monologues and minute descriptions sometimes come at the expense of pacing and dialogue in these often multi-chaptered first-person stories, and the solipsism of Rabe's emotionally immature characters blinds them to the reality of their interaction with others. But these stories;occasionally tedious but also marked by strikingly good observational prose;perceptively sketch the experiences of 21st-century misfits.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118070
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118073
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,202,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, September 5, 2005

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lr2 "lr2" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Primitive Heart: Stories (Hardcover)

A magnificent collection by an American Master. A powerful, moving, exhiliarating work! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!