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Women with Men: Three Stories
by
Richard Ford
Richard Ford's Independence Day--his sequel to The Sportswriter, and an international bestseller--is the only novel ever to have received both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Now, with Women With Men, he reaffirms his mastery of shorter fiction with his first collection since the widely acclaimed Rock Springs, published a decade ago.
The landscape of Women wi...more
The landscape of Women wi...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
April 2nd 2009
by Vintage
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This is actually a great intro to Richard Ford, if you're not ready to get into the entire life of Mr. Frank Bascombe of "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day." The prose is simple, yes, but gets abstract when Ford delves into the the thinking of his muddled male characters. And that's the point, isn't it - men in the late 20th century are muddled creatures, everything at their disposal, with too many choices. They make bad ones, good ones, mostly out of delusional thinkin...more
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I'm at a writers' retreat in southern France and a Belgian man brought this book for the library. I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of Ford, though he's clearly famous in the US and the rest of Europe. These long short-stories are written in a wonderful simple Carver-esque style and give an intimate glimpse at three male-female relationships from the man's point of view. In the fact the second story, Jealousy, seems to me to be more about the sisterly relationship although you only meet one ...more
Ford can really tell a story. Each of the three novellas here involve a calamitous event, which I could have done without. Maybe Ford felt the stories needed the events for gravitas. I didn't think so. Not that they ruined the stories or felt out of place. I just love a good story where nothing really happens, an author who feels confident enough to just write, and not include any sort of important plot points. I could read Ford's prose for weeks straight, plot or no plot.
The first n...more
The first n...more
I think the mark of a good short story writer is that they manage to make you feel like you're reading a novel and like you'd want to read a full-length work by them. This is how Ford made me feel with this three story collection. I especially enjoyed how even though each story was set differently they were still connected and really quite similar. Anyone who's familiar with Richard Yate's work will definitely see his influence in these pages. I think Ford did a marvelous tribute to Yate's quiet...more
Ford acknowledges his debt to Richard Yates at the beginning of this book and even without that I think I would've been struck with the parallels to "Revolutionary Road" (the only Yates I've read) in the psyche of the male character in Ford's first story. The third story almost seemed as if the characters (their thoughts, if not their actions) could be interchanged from one story to the other and not much would be different. And though each story contains a 'shocking' event and each ...more
My first by Richard Ford and amazingly good. Loved the insights into the male psyche of his main characters. This is a collection of three short stories, connected by themes of marriage and infidelity, the search for love (or conversely, the seeming avoidance of it), and how human relationships work (or rather, how they don’t). The three main adult male characters are very well depicted, fully three-dimensional, and memorable, but each of them is also distinctly unlikable in their own fashion. F...more
The book contains three novellas, one of which is quite good. The other two, unfortunately, are not. The middle novella of the three, "Jealous" (a sequel of sorts to Ford's short story "Great Falls"), worked very well. It's a dark and lonely story, and Ford wraps the action in wonderfully bleak and atmospheric prose. The other two novellas left me cold. Both "The Womanizer" and "Occidentals" are stories of Americans in Paris, and both of the Americans...more
3 short stories, all from a male perspective. Martin is a womanizing international sales rep, Larry is a young man going to see his mother for the holidays, and Charley is an accidental author on a work holiday in Paris.
I found the characters in the stories (the exception being Larry and his father) to be completely unsympathetic so it made getting through their stories a challenge. Why should I care about their lives when they don't seem to be too interested in them?
I found the characters in the stories (the exception being Larry and his father) to be completely unsympathetic so it made getting through their stories a challenge. Why should I care about their lives when they don't seem to be too interested in them?
Ford tries to reinvent himself with European settings in the first and last of these three stories. They're amibitious stories, but fall short of his American settings--particularly the west, which he uses as his setting for the second story--the strongest of the three. This collection of three stories falls short of the high water mark of his Rock Springs collection.
I have a feeling that this was not the Richard Ford I ought to have started with, but I'm okay with that. I like the way he writes, even if this book didn't completely thrill me, so I think I'd like to seek out some of his novels. The first and last stories were sort of about the egoistic trappings of the middle-aged white male mind, it seemed to me. I could follow the wonderings of thought well, and could appreciate it, and though I'm glad I read it, in the end it did not change my life.
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The first story is very good, the other two not so much. The latter short stories seemed to lack the focus the first one had, they just rolled along with not much to say. Still, the first one was so good it redeemed a lot. Thinking about reading Independence Day.
I very much enjoyed the author's writing style. It was very expressive and involving. The characters were well-developed and very interesting. The stories within this book are not quick reads, but if you have the time, you should enjoy them.
Loved the first story, and did not enjoy the last two...disappointed, but was the first time I read him. I loved his first story so much I ordered 2 of his older collections of short stories. Hope I like them!
Three stories that are too long for short stories, but they don't fit the classic novella format, either...
If all of them were like the middle one ("Jealous"), I would have given this a solid 5 stars; the middle story is great, classic American short story writing - taut, precise, restrained in its language, straight-forward in its story-telling, with characters that leave an impression; this one is excellent!
Unfortunately, the other two aren't; the first and third stories ...more
If all of them were like the middle one ("Jealous"), I would have given this a solid 5 stars; the middle story is great, classic American short story writing - taut, precise, restrained in its language, straight-forward in its story-telling, with characters that leave an impression; this one is excellent!
Unfortunately, the other two aren't; the first and third stories ...more
Womanizer is one the most powerful stories I've ever read. The last one is too long, but in retrospect, I fell it contains more stuff than I first thought.
In his short stories Ford generates a personal tension between the reader and his protagonist.
We are too much alike. For those of us born in the baby boom, his writing strikes a chord missed by the writers we were supposed to idealize. Ken Kesey never did it for me. I didn't do the sex drugs and rock and roll scene. I was a philosophical theology student who found an emptiness in the world. I didn't escape those years unscathed. Nor did his characters. Ford skillfully constructs the man...more
We are too much alike. For those of us born in the baby boom, his writing strikes a chord missed by the writers we were supposed to idealize. Ken Kesey never did it for me. I didn't do the sex drugs and rock and roll scene. I was a philosophical theology student who found an emptiness in the world. I didn't escape those years unscathed. Nor did his characters. Ford skillfully constructs the man...more
Womanizer is one the most powerful stories I've ever read. The last one is too long, but in retrospect, I fell it contains more stuff than I first thought.
All stories set in Paris if I recall correctly. Stories about people in the same vein as Rock Springs, stunningly told but about rather sad lives.
Better to my mind than his novels, which I never get around to finishing. The standout here is the first story, The Womanizer.
It's not "a story," it's three short novellas.
They're quite good, though nowhere near Ford's best work.
Read them.
They're quite good, though nowhere near Ford's best work.
Read them.
These stories cover universal territory: love & hate, narcissism & self-loathing. All 3 are gems of fiction. My favorite is the middle one, about the kid going to Seattle, because it is much more subtle than the others. But the other two are great also because I think Ford does a great job of...almost ignoring the shock value of adultery and suicide, instead going for the guts of the situation and exploring what's in the connections between people. At some point in the book there is a mentio...more
Brilliant.
Jealous is a really amazing story flanked by two stories with protagonists that are hard to like. These stories have a lot to say, in simple, beautiful prose. I'll read more Ford.
Classic Ford.
Jessica
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
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Recommended to Jessica by:
old BC book
So I mostly read this in one day up to the slope and back. This was an old book club book...I think I have 5 or 6 of those left. It was okay. I normally don't like short stories but it was fine for airplane reading. And the fact that it is a Pulitzer Prize winning author helps. His attention to detail is quite nice. I really liked the first story but the other two were not really my thing. The drunk aunt was annoying. And I totally predicted the 3rd story ending.
Three variable but excellent stories. Ford's female characters can seem a bit limited at times. The woman who's fighting illness in Paris seems to be a forerunner of some of Frank Bascombe's girlfriends. Also the woman in "Abyss". Brassy, built and sex-dominated. It seems that maybe women are mysterious to RF. The first story is a devastating portrait of a narcissist. The photograph on the cover of this edition was in "The Family of Man".
Richard Ford is a great writer. He has the ability to capture the minute to minute psyche of men, particularly middle aged ones. His style is varied between stories and his characters are well realised. His stories are well timed and don't feel forced. People rave on about Independnce Day and say it is his best work. If his talents are in full force in that book, I am looking forward to reading it.
I like Ford's stories. I just don't understand why they have to ruin themselves with big climatic happenings: shootouts, kidnappings, cancer.
A genuinely fantastic set of stories. I can't say enough about R. Ford when he is at his best. This is one of those times. I can't wait to read Lay of the Land, but I want to wait, knowing this could be it for me and Frank Bascombe.
In any event, these three stories are captivating and perfect in damn near every way.
In any event, these three stories are captivating and perfect in damn near every way.
Ford's writing is so understated that it's easy to forget the strength with which he captures his characters. They all believe in themselves a little too much, and are always surprised by life, by an obvious blunder. The masterful thing is, Ford makes the experience so real, we don't see the blunder coming.
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Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.
For more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_For...
More about Richard Ford...
For more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_For...
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