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We're in Trouble (Hardcover)

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4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his striking debut collection, Coake considers how character is revealed under pressure. The title story is a stunner, a series of three vignettes in which a young man recalls a tragic accident, two lovers witness a death and a married couple grapple with the husband's terminal cancer. A misfit couple breaks into an Upper Peninsula cabin, but find themselves trapped in a blizzard in "Abandon." In "Cross Country," a man estranged from his wife takes their young son on a road trip; several shifts in point of view—from father, to son, to an outside observer—throw the dynamics of their relationship into question and blur the lines between love and menace. The story concludes with an ambiguous gesture made with protective intent: "He tightens his grip on the wheel, and concentrates instead on what he knows: the flat horizon stretched out ahead. The soft warmth of the boy's neck. His hand resting on it. The way his fingers curl, to fit its shape." "A Single Awe" introduces Dana, a married woman tormented by adulterous thoughts. Her husband is a good but dull man, and the selfless act of heroism that won her love also revealed her own limitations. With unadorned but dramatic, economical prose, Coake explores the human capacity for altruism and cowardice in these high-stakes tales.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In these seven harrowing short stories, the characters often face serious physical danger, from nearly being engulfed in a fiery auto wreck to succumbing to the cold while snowbound in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Spurred by these extreme situations, the characters experience deep emotional insights, although the painful truths they learn about themselves can be discomfiting. The scenarios depicted are dramatic and suspenseful, which adds immeasurably to the stories' readability. In "All through the House," for example, one of the most affecting stories in the collection, a sheriff in rural Indiana must escort a best-selling true-crime writer as she seeks information about a notorious murder-suicide. A house in the woods is the site of the Christmas Eve massacre, in which an enraged husband killed his entire family and then himself. He was the sheriff's best friend from childhood. As the sheriff grimly stonewalls the writer and her incessant probing, the scenes shift to the night of the murders and then further back, to childhood. Gripping reading from a talented newcomer. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (April 11, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0151010943
ISBN-13: 978-0151010943
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,132,658 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
ERIC AND KRISTEN ARE IN UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Patricia Pike, Christmas Eve, Lake Superior

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

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4.9 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding debut work!, July 23, 2005

By	Nancy L. Middleton "celticmoon" (Connecticut US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The prevailing theme of these short stories is of love, in the face of death, and this core idea is viewed from a fascinating variety of angles: long-married love confronting terminal illness, sudden death of friends turning a young man into a reluctant father, love entwined in jealousy, depression and violence, love born of heroism. Each scenario presents real characters, people we all know, tightly drawn, speaking words we all recognize. You read these stories with a near sense of having heard of or known these people. I read this book straight through, gripped by each unique story, and look forward eagerly to future work from this author. Don't be dissuaded by the seemingly dark content; some of these stories are actually uplifting, or at least come to a satisfactory close.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best $23.00 I've spent this year., April 24, 2005

By	Kyle Minor "reader" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews

The best story in this collection is "All through the House", a cinematic ride backward through time that explores the destruction of a house, and then of a family, all under the most tragic circumstances possible. It's the kind of story, if it were written by a lesser talent, that would tilt toward nihilism, toward death as spectacle, mass murder as entertaining diversion. Coake, though, works a special kind of magic, the kind that piles on the trouble, and then, without resorting to anything treacly or sentimental, leaves the reader with the feeling that, yes, bad things will happen, terrible, terrible things, but we will survive, we will go on, we will love and continue to love, and even those who have inflicted the worst pain will have also lived beautifully in moments, that no one is beyond pain, and that, while there might be no final redemption, there will be tomorrow.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The finality of death, April 22, 2005

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

The theme is death, its stunning finality, the one truth that is inarguable. Death comes in many forms, in carelessness, by accident, by design when living is no longer an option, always immutable. Its finality cannot be questioned, leaving an empty space once taken up by affection, as those left behind struggle to make peace with the aftermath of such devastation. Coake pierces the ordinary with the incisive blade of truth, nonjudgmental, people caught in the circumstances of their lives, laid bare before fate, defined by their responses. These are simple stories of complicated people confronted by their choices and their consequences.

Set in the Midwest, snow is a common factor, the weight of it, the cold, the sharp etching of emotions, an acknowledgement of extremes. Each story posits a different situation, where death, or the possibility of it, plays a central role. In "Cross Country", a boy takes a single step into manhood, traveling with a man who may or may not be his father. The boy is tentative, wary, riding in a rattling truck from Illinois to Colorado. There are no answers in this story, only questions and the knowledge that this boy's life has altered course. In "Solos", a famous mountain climber's wife endures the familiar agony of waiting to hear whether her husband lives or dies in his quest of the mountain. She has made a terrible bargain by loving this man, the mountain a mistress she cannot fight, torn between love and rage.

In "In the Event", a single young man is faced with raising the son of his best friends, just that night killed in a car accident, his life choices truncated without warning, as he grieves for the loss of the familiar while facing the challenge of the future. There are more such tangible dilemmas, a wife whose most intimate memory of her husband is his escape from immolation while dragging a woman from a burning car; two young adults trapped in a deadly snowstorm, one of them long-resigned to death, familiar with its weight; a sheriff's baleful memories of a murdered family, years after the event, his intimate knowledge of the people involved. It is the subtleties the author examines, the shaded emotions exposed by the response to tragedy. One by one, each story isolates a moment of clarity, a peek into this universe, so enormously complicated yet shockingly simple.

It is obvious that this author is intimate with grief in all its morbidity, but as he explores its many faces, there is acceptance and a faint light of hope that finally surfaces after a black night of the soul, the brutal finality that is part of life, the alter-ego of bright days, laughter and the sweet infusion of devotion to another human being. These stories are wrenching, yet impossible to resist, Coake's talent palpable. He reaches into the human heart with both hands, sure as a surgeon, yet incredibly gentle with these fragile emotions. To read We Are in Trouble is to be changed, the world illuminated. Luan Gaines/2005.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, masterful writing...
Christopher Coake's debut collection is nothing less than exceptional!

"We're in Trouble" is easily one of the top three best books of short stories I have ever read... Read more

Published 17 days ago by BJ

5.0 out of 5 stars gutshot stories
take the phone off the hook, don't control nothing with the remote, be prepared to drag at work the next day because you absolutely won't be able to put this down until the 4:00... Read more

Published 11 months ago by blues_punk

4.0 out of 5 stars Something will grab you
While I didn't find every story particularly gripping or insightful, for those I didn't, there is someone I know who did so there seems to be something for everyone. Read more

Published 21 months ago by Timothy J. Kropp

5.0 out of 5 stars FRIGHTENINGLY TALENTED WRITER
I picked this book up based on a friend's recommendation.

"We're In Trouble" is one of the best, and most memorable, books I have read this year. Read more

Published 24 months ago by TJ Johnston

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes they are... and you get to read about it
As other reviewers have stated,these unusual stories combine the themes of love and death in some very troubling and thought provoking ways. Read more

Published on January 10, 2006 by J. Fercho

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Collection
Chris Coake doesn't subscribe to the wacky narrative experiments that seem to be infesting the American literary landscape lately. Read more

Published on June 29, 2005 by Brandon

5.0 out of 5 stars A Smashing Debut
This amazing collection of short stories is one of the most accomplished debuts I've read in a long time. Read more

Published on May 9, 2005 by Jeff Talbott

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of Both Worlds
The character development, the detail, the conflict, realistic dialogue, the themes-all the components of careful writing are here. Read more

Published on April 21, 2005 by Joshua Jay

5.0 out of 5 stars A young writer way ahead of the curve
Christopher Coake's first collection of stories reads more like the work of someone with decades of publication behind him. Read more

Published on April 12, 2005 by A Reader

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