Crafted in clear, clean, sparse prose, one wonders how Ray can pull it off, but he does, his writing possessing that special something, that distinct, singular voice, that. This book collects seven stories told with such care and tenderness, it is as if Raymond Carver lets us hold the warm, beating heart of each of his characters, woman or man, girl or boy, in our trembling hands. And after reading yet again this past week, I must say Carver's words get even better with age. He died August 2, 1988, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.“That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”īack in the 1980s when this collection of essays, poems and stories was first published as part of the Vintage Contemporaries series, I read again and again. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (a National Book Award nominee in 1977), was followed by What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), and Where Im Calling From in 1988, when he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Boston Globe About the Author RAYMOND CARVER was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. Like bright birds in distant trees, Carvers stories appear in flashes, glimpses Fires reveals the arc of his purposeful flight. This collection confirms the worth of Raymond Carvers work.

Los Angeles Herald Examiner Carvers most revealing book. A disparate collection of work bound by a unity of vision and obsession. San Francisco Chronicle Seminal in Carver studies.

show the enormous talent of Raymond Carver beginning to take hold. Two of the stories that were later significantly revised in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love appear here in their original form, revealing clearly the astounding process of Carvers literary development. San Francisco Chronicle A wide-ranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver. Show the enormous talent of Raymond Carver beginning to take hold. Book Synopsis From one of the great short story writers of our time-of any time (The Philadelphia Inquirer)-comes more than sixty stories, poems, and essays, including two early versions from the seminal collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Fires by raymond carver