Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Fine Just the Way it Is (Wyoming Stories #3)

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 1,200 ratings · 266 reviews

Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain" (in her first volume of Wyoming Stories) and Bad Dirt (her second), National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral new collection. In Fine Just the Way It Is, she has expanded the limits of the form. Her stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in...more

Hardcover, 221 pages

Published September 9th 2008 by Scribner (first published 2008)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best books of September, 2008

21st out of 28 books — 24 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,036)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

May 19, 2013 Bennet rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: brilliant-voices-and-language, novels-stories

I love volume one of her Wyoming stories almost this much but not quite, because of Them Old Cowboy Songs , perhaps the sweetest short story I know. It is the love story of newlywed pioneers Archie and Rose, who in 1885 staked out a homestead where the Little Weed comes rattling down from the Sierra Madre, water named not for miniature and obnoxious flora but for P.H. Weed, a gold seeker who had starved near its source.

I say sweetest not because there's a thing sentimental about it, though much...more I love volume one of her Wyoming stories almost this much but not quite, because of Them Old Cowboy Songs , perhaps the sweetest short story I know. It is the love story of newlywed pioneers Archie and Rose, who in 1885 staked out a homestead where the Little Weed comes rattling down from the Sierra Madre, water named not for miniature and obnoxious flora but for P.H. Weed, a gold seeker who had starved near its source.

I say sweetest not because there's a thing sentimental about it, though much is dear, as when a drink of water or a deep kiss becomes precious as gold and saves you. The foreboding of the bit about "starving near the source" sets the tone, and the telling that follows is like music perfectly played, fitting for a story in which the leading man, Archie, had a singing voice that once heard was never forgotten . . . sad and flat and without ornamentation, it expressed things felt but unsayable.

It seems much of what Proulx says so well in this story should be unsayable, but in lone words and the composition entire she nails it, pitch perfect, whether the result is laughter or tears or disgust, and I experienced all inside of 35 pages. The romance especially charmed.

One summer evening, their bed spread on the floor among the chips and splinters in the half-finished cabin, they fell to kissing. Rose, in some kind of transport began to bite her kisses, lickings and sharp nips along his neck, shoulder, in the musky crevice between his arm and torso, his nipples, until she felt him shaking and looked up to see his eyes closed, tears in his lashes, face contorted in a grimace. "Oh, Archie, I didn't mean to hurt . . ." "You did not," he groaned. "It's. I ain't never been. Loved. I just can't hardly stand it." And he began to blubber "feel like I been shot," pulling her into his arms . . .

Moments of bliss being all the more dear amidst the unrelenting hardships, but I'll give nothing else away.

The other stories in this and the first volume are damn near as good and involving, such that the transition from her Wyoming lives back to my own never occurred without pause and stumbling and the hope of returning.

volume 1, Close Range: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
volume 2, Bad Dirt: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Sep 10, 2008 Gregory Baird rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008-booklist, short-stories, fiction-literature

“That was the trouble with Wyoming; everything you ever did or said kept pace with you right to the end.”

When it comes to description, Annie Proulx is undoubtedly one of the best and most unique writers out there. With her blunt, unsparing prose, a fierce intellect and a coal black sense of humor, Proulx can paint a vivid and stark portrait of American life, and nowhere is this on better display than in her Wyoming Stories, where the hardscrabble existences of her characters go hand in hand wi...more “That was the trouble with Wyoming; everything you ever did or said kept pace with you right to the end.”

When it comes to description, Annie Proulx is undoubtedly one of the best and most unique writers out there. With her blunt, unsparing prose, a fierce intellect and a coal black sense of humor, Proulx can paint a vivid and stark portrait of American life, and nowhere is this on better display than in her Wyoming Stories, where the hardscrabble existences of her characters go hand in hand with the bleak words used to describe them. Here’s how she introduces one of her characters in “Them Old Cowboy Songs”: “Archie had a face as smooth as a skinned aspen, his lips barely incised on the surface as though scratched in with a knife.” There’s a paragraph from “The Half-Skinned Steer” in Close Range , the first installment of the Wyoming series, which still gives me the chills years after I first read it.

Proulx’s descriptive power is, primarily, what keeps me coming back to the Wyoming stories, even though neither of the sequels has been able to match the power of Close Range (which also has the distinction of birthing “Brokeback Mountain,” the story the movie was based on). To tell the truth, each installment pales in comparison to the one that preceded it. Proulx has a fascination for fantasy elements that pop up in her stories that doesn’t entirely suit her style (at least not when she’s writing about the devil, who puts in a whopping two appearances in Fine Just the Way it is ). “The Sagebrush Kid,” about a man-eating, giant-size sage plant, captures something of a Twilight Zone vibe that makes it work, and still almost the entire middle section of this collection is taken up with the weakest form of Proulx’s writing. Compare this to only one out-there story in Bad Dirt , and hardly any in Close Range.

The bookends of Fine Just the Way it is are where it truly shines, and sure enough those stories are the ones that play to the intention of the Wyoming stories the best: slice-of-life vignettes that capture the essence of the hard living in such a violent, unpredictable location and the tough breed of human that it takes to live there. “Family Man” opens the collection by spotlighting Ray Forkenbrock, closing out his life in a retirement home and wondering just where the honor in his existence has gone, if there ever was any. Proulx closes it with “Tits-up in a Ditch” (which just might be the best name of a short story ever, although the meaning behind the title makes you feel bad for the immature giggle it gives you when you first catch sight of it), about naïve young Dakotah Lister, who enlists in the army and gets sent to Iraq after a failed marriage leaves her with no job prospects and no way to pay for the son her soon-to-be-ex husband left her with. While there are some winning moments in between, it is these stories that are the real winners in this collection. Aside from the fantasy element that bogs down at least three of the stories, “Deep-Blood-Greasy-Bowl” feels like a research project more than a story (indeed, Proulx pauses to explain that the impetus of the story was the discovery of an ancient fire-pit on her property and the research into Indian buffalo hunting that followed).

All in all, this is an uneven collection for Proulx, a supremely talented writer who may have been looking to shake things up a touch in her third visit to the Wyoming territory.

Grade: C+(less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 18, 2010 Kate Gould rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fine Just the Way It Is, is Annie Proulx’s second return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast are, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals; frisky female residents of a nursing home vie for “the favors of palsied men with beef jerky arms”; ranch hands and their families suffer hardship beyond endurance; and, bereft of children, a woman nurtures sagebrush.

Proulx’s writing is exhila...more

like · see review

Oct 28, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories, american-west, historical-fiction, wyoming, magical-realism

I love fiction which evokes particular cultures in a way that captures the essence of a particular place or region. Here in nine stories Proulx eloquently does that for the semi-desert plains of Wyoming, spanning timepoints from the 1880’s to the current era, from a time of the open range and homesteading, to a time of farming growth wrought by the arrival of the railroads, to the current period of oil schemes and cowboys mostly confined to rodeos.

Several traditional stories focus on people who...more I love fiction which evokes particular cultures in a way that captures the essence of a particular place or region. Here in nine stories Proulx eloquently does that for the semi-desert plains of Wyoming, spanning timepoints from the 1880’s to the current era, from a time of the open range and homesteading, to a time of farming growth wrought by the arrival of the railroads, to the current period of oil schemes and cowboys mostly confined to rodeos.

Several traditional stories focus on people whose schemes and dreams for carving out a life there inevitably succumb to derailment due to unexpected shifts in weather, economic downturns, foolish choices, and fickle life partners. One tall tale depicts a lonely woman who, after losing a child, takes to treating various pets or farm animals as her baby, then when they die or disappear she makes a sagebrush bush the target of her affections. Over the decades, in a wry approach to magical realism on Proulx’s part, this bush takes on a life of its own in resisting change. Another two stories move even further over the top in depicting the Devil updating his torments for the dead in one case and the living in another. This provides some imaginative comic relief to the darker tales of struggle.

Throughout these tales I enjoyed her clear action oriented prose, revealing dialog, and breakouts into lyrical depictions of the beauties and harshness of the environment. If you haven’t read Proulx, some of these aspects, as well as the integration of the comic and the tragic, shine through in the film versions of her novella “Brokeback Mountain” and novel “The Shipping News.” Here are a couple of examples of how she harnesses language:

The sky dropped over the undulating prairie like unrolled bolts of dirty wool, and even inside the car they could smell the coming snow.

‘Didn’t you say we were going to have trees?’ Her voice was so light she seemed to have inhaled a ribbon of cloud and to float out her words on its gauzy remnants. But her face was pinched and yellow, and she kept her hands under her buffalo robe. He thought she had taken on a Chinese look.
(less)

5 likes · like · see review

May 08, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 4 of 5 stars

The last time I looked at Annie, it was That Old Ace In the Hole, a disappointing effort, I thought. Nothing too disappointing about this collection, though. The title of Fine Just the Way It Is, is for once not the title of any of the stories. Instead, it’s a sentence that several different characters repeat in several (not all) of the stories. Wyoming is fine just the way it is. This farm is fine just the way it is. This family is just the way it is. I was about to say that the characters who...more

like · see review

Apr 29, 2012 Ron rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is a mishmash of different story styles, and not all of them as successful as the author's trademark accounts of life in the American West (past and present). There are three good examples of that genre here, and they surely must mark the end of her affair with Wyoming. Her usual grimly comic vision, still harboring a bit of romance for far-flung places and people living on the margins, has gone "tits up in a ditch" in this third collection of her western stories.

What might have been t...more

like · see review

Dec 26, 2011 James (JD) Dittes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: anything-western

I've been to Wyoming. Once. It was late spring. I crossed the northern part of the state from the Black Hills to Yellowstone, then climbed down the spine of the Tetons to Colorado. It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen: lush and green, bursting with wildlife, hot springs, and geysers. The worst thing I can say about Wyoming is that I've never been back...

...save through the writing of Annie Proulx. She's been to Wyoming, too, and she's been there a long time. And her time in Wyoming was...more

like · see review

Jan 03, 2011 Jenny Shank rated it 4 of 5 stars

http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/...

Annie Proulx’s Wyoming Is “Fine Just the Way It Is”
Annie Proulx shines again in her third collection of Wyoming stories.

By Jenny Shank, 9-08-08

Fine Just the Way it Is: Wyoming Stories 3
by Annie Proulx
Scribner, 240 pages, $25

In an award-studded writing career now in its third decade, Annie Proulx has made the remarkable transition from east-coast-based Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist to much lauded Wyoming short story writer, and she’s brought her devoted r...more

like · see review

May 14, 2010 Stephen Gallup rated it 3 of 5 stars

Much of the time, while reading this, I couldn't avoid thinking that it might not be healthy for me to be reading Annie Proulx. There are two or three somewhat humorous pieces in this collection (two having to do with the Devil and one with a man-eating sage tree out on the prairie), but the overall tone is as bleak as Postcards, which I read about a year ago.

The author's prose is highly regarded, and that's what led me to her. Actually, I wouldn't say her words and sentences are remarkable in t...more Much of the time, while reading this, I couldn't avoid thinking that it might not be healthy for me to be reading Annie Proulx. There are two or three somewhat humorous pieces in this collection (two having to do with the Devil and one with a man-eating sage tree out on the prairie), but the overall tone is as bleak as Postcards, which I read about a year ago.

The author's prose is highly regarded, and that's what led me to her. Actually, I wouldn't say her words and sentences are remarkable in themselves. It would be more accurate to say that they are a transparent medium for conveying concepts and moods directly from the author's mind to the reader's mind. The last several paragraphs of the last story here provide the only point at which I really noticed her craftsmanship:

"What about Sash?" She blurted. "You seen him. We got that official letter that says he is coming home. They don't say how bad he was hurt. We can't find out nothing. He don't call us. Maybe he can't call us. What about Sash?"

Bonita looked at Dakotah, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

The silence spread out like a rain-swollen river, lapping against the walls of the room, mounting over their heads. Dakotah thought of Ezell's taxi rolling slowly past the bereft ranches. She felt the Hickses' fear begin to solidify into knowledge. Already grief was settling around the tense couple like a rope loop, the same rope that encircled all of them. She had to draw the Hickses' rope tight and snub them up to the pain until they were numb, show that it didn't pay to love.

"Sash," she said at last so softly they could barely hear. "Sash is tits up in a ditch."

They sat frozen like people in the aftermath of an explosion, each silently calculating their survival chances in lives that must grind on. The air vibrated. At last Mrs. Hicks turned her red eyes on Dakotah.

"You're his wife," she said.

There was no answer to that and Dakotah felt her own hooves slip and the beginning descent into the dark, watery mud.

Again, I have misgivings as to how much of this sort of thing one can handle. I read about existentialism in college and understand the various themes grouped under that banner (e.g., people have free will, the individual is responsible for meaning in his own life, existence is futile but meaning is achieved by going through the motions anyway, and (especially) one should not base his self-concept on anything that can be taken away). The stories in this collection mostly concern people who crash and burn -- who begin with a plan and then live out the worst-case scenario. It's tough reading for anyone who also has aspirations but fears the worst. I suppose an existential philosopher would call this a good textbook.(less)

like · see review

Jul 08, 2009 Charles rated it 3 of 5 stars

I hate doing this, giving this book three stars, but I was disappointed. Proulx is one of the finest writers around, but this book didn't work for me, or, at least, not entirely. The stories that belong in the same genre as the earlier Wyoming collections began to feel like more of the same, as though compassion (or the lack of it) fatigue were setting in. None of the characters had the same life and vividness, for me, as those in the other collections. It's beginning to feel as though Proulx se...more

like · see review

Jan 27, 2012 Tom Bensley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Annie Proulx's Fine Just the Way it Is took me a damn long time to finish. Maybe even an entire month. Considering that the book is only 200 or so pages, that certainly could say something about the quality. Fortunately, this isn't entirely the case. FJTWII is a fantastic collection of poignant stories, some that will stay with me forever. This is my first experience with Proulx, and it just took me a long time to settle into her chosen setting. I'd say all most nothing is more alien to me than...more Annie Proulx's Fine Just the Way it Is took me a damn long time to finish. Maybe even an entire month. Considering that the book is only 200 or so pages, that certainly could say something about the quality. Fortunately, this isn't entirely the case. FJTWII is a fantastic collection of poignant stories, some that will stay with me forever. This is my first experience with Proulx, and it just took me a long time to settle into her chosen setting. I'd say all most nothing is more alien to me than the life and times of Wyoming, because I just don't live that way. I'm a lucky middle-class white kid with a more than generous pick of jobs and universities around me. The characters here are basically from another world.
In a way this is good, because fiction is a great way to escape to another place and learn all about it, all though I often felt Proulx was leaving me on the outer, with references to things I'd have to extensively research to get the gist of. This angered me somewhat, because I was alienated from the story.
Not all of them take place in Wyoming however. There are a couple set in, uh, Hell. We get to hang out with Satan and his weird assistant. I guess this is Proulx's attempt at dark humour, and man oh man is she not funny. Have you ever been to a party with great food, drinks and conversation, but you find yourself being polite to a peculiar individual that doesn't seem to know anyone? After a while, you realise why no one else is talking to them. Every joke or attempt they make to be funny falls flat. You've done so much fake laughing, you assume that guests in the other room can sense your inauthenticity. That, with a little exaggeration, is how I felt reading the two stories set in hell. The satire was just so obvious and kind of "oh, I get it...." but nothing more.
Proulx does best with tragedy, so if you feel like getting to know some very real characters and watching life continuously stab them in the back and kick them in the crotch, grab a copy of Fine Just the Way it Is.(less)

like · see review

Nov 20, 2012 Orsodimondo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: americana

TERRE DI CONFINE
C'è la natura selvaggia nei racconti di Proulx, la wilderness coi suoi panorami mozzafiato e la lotta quotidiana per domarla e sopravviverle.
Gli indiani, i cowboy, i pionieri. L'America di frontiera, il West, e anche le trivelle in cerca del primo petrolio.
I pickup.
E una indimenticabile macchia di sudore sul cappello che ricordava le mura di Gerico.
E quando qualcuno sta per incontrare un momento di serenità o spensieratezza, il destino piomba implacabile.
Un mondo che sembra...more

like · see review

Jul 17, 2012 Meg rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love Annie Proulx....I fell in love with her when I read The Shipping News and have loved her since....She is an amazing writer that touches on topics and themes that fascinate me...and because of her I want to move to Novia Scotia and learn to sail a ship. Or at least watch the boats in a harbour. So....when my sister had this book in her "donate pile"....I grabbed it. I tried to read it on a plane....but was unsuccessful.

Proulx's writing continues to rock...and I can quickly disappear into...more

like · see review

Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Annie Proulx skillfully depicts lives of hardship and struggle against the seductive but unforgiving backdrop of Wyoming as she draws memorable, complex characters whose sufferings resonate deeply with readers. Her lovely prose is as spare, straightforward, and uncompromising as the landscape she describes so vividly. Proulx balances the harshness of her tales with dark humor

like · see review

Jul 23, 2010 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

It has been said that the selection committee for the winner of the Nobel prize for literature is biased against American writers. For the most part I think those critics do not really appreciate the breadth of writing talent that exists globally. However, each time I read one of Annie Proulx's works I move closer to the sentiment that those critics may be correct. Within six months after each years winner is announced, I read one of the recipient's books. Most times I am moved by the richness o...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 10, 2009 Jamie rated it 3 of 5 stars

In my slew of women writers courses in college (always my favorites), three shorts stuck with me: A Jury of Her Peers, A New England Nun and The Blue Heron. While there are tons (tons and tons) of others I love equally, those three stand out because I used them as examples of setting within the stories of women writers. For Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Anne Porter, "setting" turns into it's own character--"local color," and what I specifically loved about it so much, was it's prevelence in wo...more In my slew of women writers courses in college (always my favorites), three shorts stuck with me: A Jury of Her Peers, A New England Nun and The Blue Heron. While there are tons (tons and tons) of others I love equally, those three stand out because I used them as examples of setting within the stories of women writers. For Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Anne Porter, "setting" turns into it's own character--"local color," and what I specifically loved about it so much, was it's prevelence in women's writing.
While Dickens wrote the roman a clef along with Joyce and the like, my favorite women's stories are tales in which women stick to what they knew at that point--their home base. Making jam and canning fruit, when described effectively, are every bit as artistic and beautiful as foot travel through villages or a boat ride down the Mississippi. And, while I'm glad the distinction between the acceptable adventures of men and women is more similar, I still love the idea of local color--of flavoring and allowing setting to be so prevelent it's basically a character within a story.
While Annie Proulx stories could be a little open-ended (I like thinking as much as the next person and interpretation can be fun, but TOO much time spent wondering if the person next to you would get the same ending gets annoying), I loved Wyoming. I loved the dusty, stubborn, undeniably female personification of what I've always thought of as a manly sort of place. To read Proulx stories, I wondered why I'd never imagined it more female on my own--the tricky rocks that trap you, the blind cliffs to catch you, the rugged borders to ensnare you--all the careful tactics my mother might have used to get her way when I was a child--Wyoming never says you can't leave--it just makes it very hard.
There were two stories about the devil, written in a contemporary manner. It reminded me a little of Stephen Colbert or something, doing Wakefield. I wasn't so into those and found my mind wondering, but I loved The Sagebrush Kid, Rose and the Cyotes and the final story about Dakota. Proulx ability to combine contemporary and seeminly ancient gold-rush world were refreshing and innovative, and her strong characters are unforgetable.
Again, I did find myself wondering if things were "real" from time to time--did people die? Did they really live? Why were they upset? Sometimes she was a little too vauge, expecting too much from the reader, but for the most part this was a fabulous colletion of short stories in a word that doesn't have enough of them.(less)

like · see review

Dec 08, 2008 Kirsten rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: if you've ever driven through Crowheart...

Recommended to Kirsten by: my Mom

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2008, xx-chromosome

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

1 like · like · see review

May 12, 2011 Bree rated it 4 of 5 stars

I drove through Wyoming two summers ago to hike in the Grand Teton National Park. Despite the deserted roads that went on forever, I couldn't help but to find Wyoming fascinating. It's one of the least populated areas of the nation, and seems to be the only place to maintain that "Old West" vibe. I started reading the Shipping News by Annie Proulx after finding it hidden in a stack of John Grisham books in a back cupboard left by the previous owners of the apartment and fell in love with her pro...more

like · see review

May 06, 2011 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

These bleak but haunting short stories span the period from the earliest homesteaders of the Wyoming Territory to the present day. Proulx creates vivid characters who will linger in your mind long after you finish their story. Each endeavors to survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment where a single mistake can (and in these stories generally does) prove fatal.

Although most of the stories here are excellent, two contemporary tales stood out as my favorites. "Tits-Up in a Ditch" is the hea...more

like · see review

Feb 02, 2011 Reema rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: story-collections

Proulx's writing continues to be rich with place, a dead-ringer for dialogue, and surprisingly looping in its narrative walk. But I grew tired of engaging, as a reader, with racist characters, esp. since I'm asked to do this in the real world often enough. I understand that, as a writer, her duty is to document almost to an anthropological accuracy the socio-political landscape of her chosen community; and in aesthetic terms, the writing is often so technically impressive, so imaginative, that a...more

like · see review

May 09, 2013 Rod Raglin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading Annie Proulx is painful while at the same time exhilarating.

Her short stories grab you so you can't stop reading, then once you're committed, brutalize you emotionally. Her plots subscribe to the philosophy that 'life's a bitch and then you die'. And die they do. In this collection of short stories two freeze to death, one miscarries and bleeds to death, one gets thrown from the back of a pickup and another gets kicked by a horse.

The only surviving main character has her arm blown off i...more

like · see review

Jan 10, 2010 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed these short stories -- although almost all of them were hard to read about. They were mostly about poor Wyoming ranchers, scraping a living, only to be beaten down by the forces around them. Sad, sad, sad.
The characters are wonderfully drawn and you get a sense of the incredibel beauty of the landscape and the harshness of farm life.

Perhaps the saddest tale is the last one -- about unloved, unwanted Dakotah Hicks. Everything about her life is sad -- grandparents who raise her and have...more

like · see review

Dec 18, 2008 Carolyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

can a person have nightmares from a book? i guess so or its just my dark imagination. annie proulx in these short stories has this dark look at the way people are in a losing game against the bleak environment of wyoming and the wild lands of the west. the nightmare was the description of a woman taking a backpacking trip alone, and the difficulties that she cannot excape on the trip. having taken backpacking trips alone, this one got me big time. they say you should never go along and they are...more

like · see review

Apr 18, 2011 Cheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

No doubt Annie Proulx is a good writer. Some of the stories I would have skipped because I didn't like the story even though she wrote them well.

This book is very down to earth. It is written just as life comes along, no fairy tales here. Most of the protagonists die. It seems there has to be some joy in this hard country, yet she portrays mostly the gut wrenching truths of only the most extreme sadness.

She also seems to see a homosexual possibility behind every male's door. I am beginning to...more

like · see review

Dec 17, 2010 Bill Preston rated it 3 of 5 stars

Annie Proulx is a fine writer and I have enjoyed each of her Wyoming story collections. I may not remember the balance of the stories in the other books, I certainly don't recall them being as grim as this collection. Strongly written, engaging and peopled with characters that felt painfully real, I found myself wondering if this is the only side of Wyoming she has taken to heart, she should definitely move. Not a lot of happy campers in this bunch, unless you count the two whimsical stories tha...more

like · see review

Dec 09, 2009 Sydney rated it 3 of 5 stars

Annie Proulx is one of my favorite authors, and I absolutely loved her first two books of short stories about Wyoming. She lives in Wyoming now, and has managed in a short time to absorb the reality of the life there. Her characters are especially spot-on and reflect the hard-scrabble life so many people, especially young people, in Wyoming endure. However, in this book, she goes off on a strange tangent for some of her stories that does not vibe with me. She has a handful of stories set in hell...more

like · see review

Feb 18, 2011 Cindy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, literary-fiction, short-stories

Annie's words read by Will Patton . . . wonderful. I wish there had been some separation between the stories, or introduction to them. Even a title list on the box would have been nice.

As for the Wyoming stories themselves, there is everything the Big Sky can hold - cattle, heartbreak, the devil, understanding, family, descriptive passages that take you off to the bright blue sky and unrelenting wind of the country.

Here's one of my favorite passages:
"Every ranch...had lost a boy," thinks Dakota...more

like · see review

Nov 05, 2009 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Proulx is a master. Her sentences are pure pleasure and her sense of place and character unerring. Especially the last, and longest of the stories, from which the title is taken, really moved me---the story of a broken and dirt-poor Wyoming family, a girl raised by her hard-assed grandparents after her "bad-girl" mom disappears. Dakota is her name, and she winds up in Iraq. There is an intense present-sense, mixed with a panoramic telescoping of the past that explains how our characters got wher...more

like · see review

Dec 16, 2008 Neil rated it 3 of 5 stars

Let me preface this by saying that on my list of contemporary writers, Annie Proulx definitely ranks in the top ten. The Shipping News, Accordion Crimes, Close Range, That Old Ace in the Hole, I thought they were all wonderful.

Fine Just the Way It Is has some good stories: "Tits-Up in a Ditch," "Family Man," and "The Great Divide" were vintage Proulx. But this collection isn't nearly as strong on the whole as Close Range. Is it just me, or would other readers like to see her move on from the Wyo...more

like · see review

Jul 10, 2011 Mae rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, ireland

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" Antonio Machado (1875-1939) With this quote, Proulx starts one of her stories, and I feel it defines the core of this collection of short stories. Framed by the Wyoming wild nature and tough way of life, she develops her characters and their tribulations. It is crisply well written, you can feel the dusty wind, the dry weed snapping under their feet. They are separate stories, including two set in Hell, with the devil redecorating hell, in...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 67 68 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (21)

More editions...

Genres

Short Stories

56 users

Western

4 users

Literary Fiction

3 users

Literature

3 users

Contemporary

3 users

Literature > American

2 users

Adult Fiction

2 users

Short Stories > Short Story Collection

2 users

American > Americana

2 users

Book Club

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About E. Annie Proulx

Also published as E. Annie Proulx
Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive c...more

More about E. Annie Proulx...

Books by E. Annie Proulx

Brokeback Mountain: Now a Major Motion Picture

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Fine Just the Way...

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

title link	preview: Fine Just the Way it Is
avg rating	preview: Fine Just the Way it Is Goodreads rating: 3.71 (1200 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1781879.Fine_Just_the_Way_it_Is?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347596019l/1781879.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1781879.Fine_Just_the_Way_it_Is?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Fine Just the Way it Is by E. Annie Proulx[/url]

Fine Just the Way it Is (Wyoming Stories #3)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website