Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion–by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and ...
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May 25, 2011
Eric
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Though the stories in this 2005 collection all make use of contemporary gadgetry—scénariste of lust and betrayal, Salter can hardly forgo the incriminating email, the voicemails of avoidance—they are really set in Midcentury Manhattan Storyland. People mostly drink dry martinis and scotch on the rocks. Whenever “the war” is mentioned you know it’s the Big One. The characters of “My Lord You” are straight from the 1950s: the Auchinclossian estate lawyer, his balletic gamine of a wife (she has an
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May 15, 2008
Kerry
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Salter is incredible. I found him through Ondaatje and admire them equally; both can throw in a simple phrase that will turn your heart over in the middle of a paragraph. The stories in this collection are about love and loss and the beauty that comes from life because – only because – of its imperfections. The message becomes despondent towards the end of the book– and I began to feel that all is hopeless in the world, that we are unable to actualize what we want. But the trick with Salter is
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Feb 05, 2009
Critics call novelist and short-story writer Salter a writer's writer. These stories (some previously published in Esquire and The New Yorker) also confirm that he's "a reader's writer" in his exploration of universal themes (Rocky Mountain News). Reviewers unanimously applaud Salter's gleaming, precise prose and haunting retrospection, which reinforce complex and sophisticated characters and themes. "You can practically smell the cigarette smoke and hear the booze-scratched timbr
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Sep 15, 2009
Spike
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Although Salter has control of the language throughout, I found 3/4 of this collection to be predictable fare from the academic-literary-MFA-nobody-reads-this-only-because-it's-art camp. I liked Platinum the best, in which Salter simply nails the subject of infatuation, how a man will willingly continue to damage himself and his family for a younger woman, despite being fully aware that it isn't love and he's wrecking his life. This story alone was worth the time it took to get through the other
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Jun 01, 2011
Bennet
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The effect was cumulative. From start to finish I followed a series of unrelated but analogous and increasingly involving incidents, each featuring lovers in a varying states of desire, devotion or disrepair. The book, a short story collection, opens with a simple wedding and ends with a couple’s botched go at euthanasia, which wound up seeming the beginning and ending of one loosely woven account, a continuum of relationships. To start I was yawning; by the end I was too verklempt to brea More...
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Sep 12, 2008
Eric
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Salter is meticulous. He hones each sentence and places it perfectly. He can give a clear impression of an entire life with a few short sentences.
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Nov 21, 2009
Paul
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Incredible. Very brief, I read this in a day. I've read it several times before, and it doesn't lose its punch. Salter creates little perfect worlds with little perfect sentences. He's very precise, yet the stories aren't stilted. A few toward the end sag a bit, but the final story is an absolute stunner. Most of the women in the collection are young and beautiful, with gorgeous bodies which are often in swimsuits. Salter sometimes shocks with somewhat twisty moves, but not quite to a fault. Thi
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Oct 06, 2009
Crystal
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Pithy stories centered (in most cases) on somewhat soulless, clinging characters seemingly unaware of their own superficiality. I'd at first anticipated the revealing of something universal--ruminations on life squandered and fictitious "experience" perhaps leading to an epiphany or two--but soon resigned myself to the vaguely predictable revelations in each snapshot-like tale. Also, I was turned off by the needless reduction of most female characters to an assemblage of body parts sub
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Mar 02, 2011
Diane
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Synopsis from Publisher's Weekly: Teetering marriages, collapsing relationships and other calamities of the heart drive these 10 compact, unsettling stories by respected writer Salter.
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James Salter is really an under-appreciated writer. While he's considered to be more of a writer's writer, he really has an impressive way with words. This set of short stories explore human relations in a realistic and heartbreaking way. At the beginning of each, More...
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James Salter is really an under-appreciated writer. While he's considered to be more of a writer's writer, he really has an impressive way with words. This set of short stories explore human relations in a realistic and heartbreaking way. At the beginning of each, More...
Dec 10, 2011
K.M.
rated it:
Salter is one of my literary idols. His writing is both traditional and strange, and he chisels his sentences things of wonder and beauty. He takes familiar American short-story scenarios—marriage on the rocks, a couple's erotic life breaking down, men unsure what to do with their maleness—and through unexpected shifts in point-of-view and plot twists (the kind you don't see coming, but turn out to have been buried from the start), he wakes you up as you read. You feel that zing that only a shar
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Nov 29, 2008
Jane
rated it:
Last Night was a little creepy. I didn’t understand everything that happened in the story as I was reading it, but as the last few lines came up, it all made sense. Salter didn’t necessarily employ the “trick the reader” technique, but it sure felt that way at the end. In this case, it worked in a way that didn’t make me feel frustrated or cheated. I really enjoyed the sparseness and the eerie tone the sparseness provided. This is one of those stories that have to be read twice: once for t
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Nov 24, 2008
Powells.com
rated it:
Salter is one of the greatest writers that almost no one reads, which is unfortunate since he is a master of the written word. Last Night is a fine example of his ability to tell sharp, precise stories with not one word wasted. These are stories about men and women, desire and loss, about who we are when all the extraneous stuff is peeled away. These are stories so perfect, they're nearly impossible to describe.
Recommended by Shawn, Powells.com
Recommended by Shawn, Powells.com
Oct 17, 2008
Paula
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Now I know why I want to read more by Salter. Eventually I want to read A Sport and a Pastime, which was highly recommended to me, but I started with Last Night when I saw it at the Strand last week.
Ten short stories are included in this collection. Some have characters or situation that overlap and give the book a way to link the stories together. Just because characters aren't likable doesn't mean that the stories aren't well written; some of the situations captured are appalling b More...
Ten short stories are included in this collection. Some have characters or situation that overlap and give the book a way to link the stories together. Just because characters aren't likable doesn't mean that the stories aren't well written; some of the situations captured are appalling b More...
May 18, 2011
Kim
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Delicious, like dark chocolate flecked with sea salt. Slightly bitter, nuanced, sophisticated. I started reading it last night and was so engrossed I picked it up again first thing this morning before starting my day. A series of short stories dealing with the complications, machinations, and illuminations of mature relationships. Salter is an astute technician - skilled with words (often you have to read between the lines to know exactly what is going on between characters, as if you are a fly
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May 12, 2011
Ever since I discovered the New Yorker magazine's podcasts each month of short stories, I've become willing to start reading some. I heard the title story in this anthology, Last Night, and was blown away - so much that I bought this anthology. Never used to care that much for short stories, but this author (and also, T.C Boyle) have changed my mind. Amazing stories.
Jan 26, 2008
Jessica
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I am a great fan of Salter's...I love his writing and these stories are understated and rich at the same time. Salter is especially good with relationships, what gets said and not said. A passage I like: 'There was a moth on the windshield as they headed back. They were going forty miles an hour: its wings were quivering in what must have been a titanic wind as it resisted being borne into the night. Still, stubbornly, it clung, like gray ash but thick and trembling.--What are you doing? she
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Nov 22, 2011
Aaron
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Another incredible set of stories from the master writer's writer. Salter returns to his usual themes - desire, betrayal, lust - but each story provides a unique twist on the themes that never lost my interest. The title story is excellent, and the twist at the end was incredible!
Dec 04, 2010
E.C.
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Stunning. Beautiful, spare prose. It's difficult to describe Salter's writing without acute awareness of one's own dramatic short-comings in sentence structure and word choice. I'm awestruck by how great these stories are. Timeless.
May 11, 2009
K R N
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One of the most depressing books I've ever read. It's short stories, and every single one is horrifically depressing. I don't understand why the critics praise his writing so much; I was totally disappointed.
Mar 25, 2009
Adam
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Hard to find fault with the prose in Salter's stories, but the subject matter (an unsatisfying marriage, temptation from a younger woman or old flame) grows predictable when stretched over an entire collection. The title story is beautiful, and not because of its twist ending.
Jan 26, 2011
Mely
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Short stories about love, lust, and loss. Gorgeous prose. Complex characterization of the women almost makes up for them all being seen externally when it comes to sex.
Dec 16, 2009
Edan
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I read this book in a day and a third. Although the subject matter is somewhat stale (marriages dissolving, bored women, drunk men thinking of past lovers),
the stories are absorbing, and the prose is lovely: clean, concise, and structurally pleasing and surprising--
"They had twin beds in the apartment off Venice Boulevard and also that summer in Malibu in a house rented from an actor who had gone on location for six weeks. There was a leafy passageway that led to the beach More...
the stories are absorbing, and the prose is lovely: clean, concise, and structurally pleasing and surprising--
"They had twin beds in the apartment off Venice Boulevard and also that summer in Malibu in a house rented from an actor who had gone on location for six weeks. There was a leafy passageway that led to the beach More...
Sep 17, 2011
Readingwildly
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I based my rating on personal enjoyment rather than quality of writing. None of his work is super uplifting, but theses little glimpses into relationships were all sad.
Feb 06, 2009
Robert
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Another excellent piece of writing... several short stories about desire, how it simultaneously makes life worth living and shatters our lives into pieces.
Jan 30, 2012
Michele
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Good lord this collection packs a punch. The title story especially. But the one that has stuck in my mind is the one that ends in a hotel lobby. Gutting.
Jan 14, 2009
Jim
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I have a library book display to thank for suggesting this book. It is marvelous, scarely a false sentence in the collection.
Jan 21, 2010
Sara
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I really enjoyed this book of short dark stories of human behavior. I learned that I want to read more of Mr. Salters books. Next stop library!
Jul 05, 2011
Sebastian
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Very good, a bit slight at under 150 pages and not as transcendent as A Sport and a Pastime or Light Years, though that's hardly a knock considering those towering achievements. After those two novels squarely in the mid-century, references to cell phones and computers were somewhat jarring in this collection of elliptical short stories. We get old, things change, the mysteries and consequences of romantic entanglements do not. Even average Salter is better than most fiction out there. Not t
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Feb 27, 2011
Aerial Nun
rated it:
Even if you can guess where some stories are headed, Salter's turn of phrase is often hard to beat.
