What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

4.31 of 5 stars 4.31 · rating details · 14,387 ratings · 741 reviews

This powerful collection of stories, set in the Northwest among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK. With its spare, colloquial narration and razor-sharp sense of how people really communicate, the collection went on to become one of the most influential pieces of lit...more

Paperback, Vintage Books Edition, 159 pages

Published June 1989 by Vintage Books (first published 1981)

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Jan 21, 2012 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

"Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you’re going to do a good job with it."

Indeed. If one wanted to distill the stories within this collection down to a pithy, inverted, Hallmark-style aphorism, this would be a top contender.

(Click For Review Soundtrack: "Little Person")

Drinking and smoking and talking: these are the true main characters of Carver’s world (and make no mistake: he’s summoned and crafted a distinctive world). Okay, we can quibble and refer to this trifecta more aptly as the t...more

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Jul 14, 2009 KFed rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'll announce the cliche of my loving this book before you beat me to it.

I'm an overeducated, mock-contemplative early-twenty-something with a penchant for strong male voices (despite my feminist leanings) and a distaste for anything too sentimental. I was raised in the tradition of "Show, Don't Tell" and hold this closer than even my favorite teddy (whose name is Atticus.) My middle name is "Minimalism." My other middle name is "Ooh, that sounds pretty."

With that out of the way, yes, of course...more I'll announce the cliche of my loving this book before you beat me to it.

I'm an overeducated, mock-contemplative early-twenty-something with a penchant for strong male voices (despite my feminist leanings) and a distaste for anything too sentimental. I was raised in the tradition of "Show, Don't Tell" and hold this closer than even my favorite teddy (whose name is Atticus.) My middle name is "Minimalism." My other middle name is "Ooh, that sounds pretty."

With that out of the way, yes, of course I loved this volume, and probably for the reasons you'd expect.

Raymond Carver's name should be in lights. Everyone who likes this book is going to tell you that one of Carver's strengths is his knack for understatement. I'm guessing what they're getting at is Carver's ability to keep all the mechanics of his stories imperceptible beneath the surface, with maybe a few out-of-character exceptions (the alcohol device in the title story being one). There's also the fact that Carver seems to accomplish things in the span of one page that so many authors would kill many more trees (and possibly small children, and maybe even a puppy or two) to achieve; see the opening page of "Tell The Women We're Going" to see what I mean. How many authors can convincingly sum up the entire personal history of two characters in only one paragraph?

Beneath the tightness of each story there seems to be a distinctive pulse. Not the rhythm of the language. Rather, the kind of pure life energy that all artistic works strive for (or at least they should.) When stories took turns ("for the worst" is implicit), what startled me more than each outcome was often the fact that I was so moved by them each. It's because of this pulse that characters who existed for only 3 or 4 pages still seemed to walk off the page and become real. And that's probably what will make these stories linger in my memory.

People often seem to speak of "Raymond Carver's America" when they're trying to grasp these stories. I don't know what that means, or if Raymond Carver's America is anything like mine. Whatever it is, it's tortured and beautiful. And I like it.(less)

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Dec 13, 2009 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

My fucking head hurts. I should be writing my thesis, but the math part of crunching the data is hurting my head. It shouldn't though. It should be easy math. I'm dumber than I used to be. Instead I'll procrastinate, and share a review I wrote 6 years ago for another website that I haven't written a single thing on in just about 6 years. All date references should have six years added to them.

After reading MFSO's review I wanted to make some comment about a line that I really like in the first...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Con McVeety rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mordern-life-is-a-drag

“Elsewhere” (or “What We Talk About When We Talk About Great Writing” )

You see the other day after work I was sort of deep in my head. Try as I might I couldn’t get this girl out my head. Also I couldn’t get the other girls that got away out of my head. A feeling of saddens and loneliness had moved in me, I was a fog of sorrow.

I tried to look on the up side of things; I was done with work, and was free. Free of running packages downtown from high-rises of glass and metal, high-rises of stone a...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Jana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Few years ago I saw Jindabyne, movie based on Carver's story 'So Much Water So Close to Home' and I loved it. It left me numb and a bit disoriented. I started reading Carver more than five times during the last ten years, but I didn't find him any good. Of course, reading Carver is all connected with the right age and coming back to full circle. When you can understand segments of marginal psyche of people with whose life you can easily identify yourself with. Carver is not a smooth writer. I re...more

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Jan 19, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books

Shelves: anthology, 501

Dirty Realism is the genre where this book is classified. Coined in the 80's, the dirty-realism school of writing became popular during that decade due to the writings of Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff among others. Their language is sparse and their characters are the blue-collar, middle-class Americans who faced disappointments, heartbreaks and harsh truths in their ordinary lives.

I have been reading a biography of Haruki Murakami and read last week...more Dirty Realism is the genre where this book is classified. Coined in the 80's, the dirty-realism school of writing became popular during that decade due to the writings of Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff among others. Their language is sparse and their characters are the blue-collar, middle-class Americans who faced disappointments, heartbreaks and harsh truths in their ordinary lives.

I have been reading a biography of Haruki Murakami and read last week that part saying that one of his influences is Raymond Carver. When I saw a copy of this book last Friday, I bought it right away. The reason: I like Murakami's style: the sparse, easy-to-understand narrative and, I must admit, the fantasy elements that he seems to be very fond of using.

My edition of this book is composed of 17 short eccentric yet thought-provoking stories. Very Murakami except that the fantasy elements (the talking animals, the roving television camera, etc) are totally absent. Carver's characters are all human beings but the mood is always bleak as if the his characters do not know how to laugh and see the good side of things. Don't get me wrong though; these stories will not dampen your mood. Rather, it will make you think of your own life as you see yourself (even if you are not an American), in those stories. They are short (the shortest is 3 pages) but told in minimalist manner totally devoid of excess words. Every word has a purpose and if you speed read, you will not get what the message is and you will have to go back and read again. In most of the stories, Carver did not care to put names to the characters so he just uses "woman", "man", "boy" or their pronoun equivalents. So, that could be confusing if you don't pay attention. I think the purpose of that is to make his readers see themselves in those characters.

The title story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) is the 16th story in this compilation (I know that in other editions it is the first). I think it is properly placed there because it is the most beautiful among the 17. Also the last story One More Thing seems to be like an afterthought of the title story so the book has that cohesive message: that Love is too hard to understand. Its meaning is elusive to most of us. Even if we keep talking about Love, we don't really know what it is really.

And yes, it is obvious that Murakami even got his inspiration from Carver's title when he came up with his non-fiction book: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Talk about originality.(less)

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Dec 13, 2007 Lesley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: it's hard to say...

As I recall, reading this book is like chain smoking in a cinder block walled room (with a burn-marked reddish-orange carpet) and dropping your butts into a half empty beer can resting on a round chipped wood laminate table. Reading this book is like going to the movie-version of an NA meeting in a church basement. It's all gritty, full of one quarter hope and three quarters deep, devastating tragedy. That sounds totally awful, but really you just have to be in the right mood.

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May 16, 2013 Tina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Tina by: Angus

Shelves: borrowed, 2013, anthology, best-2013

Original post from One More Page

I attended the wedding of my brother's best friend last week. I like weddings. It may be something that runs in the family since my brother is a wedding videographer. But I really, really like attending weddings, because it's such a happy, happy day. Plus, I really like hearing wedding vows.

Anyway, my wedding weekend read was Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love , which I borrowed from Angus when I got the chance to check out his bookshelf....more

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Dec 14, 2011 M.L. Rudolph rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

1974. Simple powerful tales that magically come alive in your hands.

Carver slips inside his characters with such skill and grace that you don't read so much as eavesdrop.

These stories are of intense moments for troubled people. Or they are the stories troubled people tell others to pretend their lives are in balance when they aren't.

The spare yet elegant writing projects lives at the near-boil, poised or paralysed for choice.

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Jan 27, 2009 Trin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit, shortstories

Stylistically incredible if relentlessly depressing short stories. I read this because Haruki Murakami counts Carver as an influence, and I can see that: they share a certain spare clarity of prose, and an occasional touch of beautiful oddness (though Murakami takes the latter much farther than Carver does). But while Murakami is often quite funny, Carver is just bleak—read too many of these stories in a row and you’ll want to throw yourself off the roof. Read in sequence like that, they also st...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who wondered what Hemingway was like on dry land

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: seen it around - the title got me curious

Shelves: read-in-2011

In friendship
In affection
In love
In lust
In perpetuity
In memoriam

Is this what we talk about when we talk about love? Carver's stories are short, pared down love stories, stripped of everything but the necessary words and the skeletal, frequently all too human frame upon which to hang them. Some of his work doesn't seem like a love story at all, think Hemingway, if he left out the toros, marlin fishing and drinking. Carver is a landlocked Hemingway in fact. You might be left wondering, where is th...more

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Jan 07, 2009 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The opening story in this collection really threw me. I thought I had garnered a better grasp on sparse prose, the understated, the unstated, from recent reading material, but that first story really just baffled me. I had no idea what to think of it. Proceeding along, there were stories that certainly struck a chord in me, for example the one about a father slash ex-husband visiting his ex-wife and kids on Christmas, and the tensions there, while other stories left me wanting more of an explana...more

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Apr 26, 2009 Jean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, mind-blowers

Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a masterpiece of short stories. The stories though sparse in length makes one reevaluate how he/she views life experiences of others. Carver takes what seem as inconsequential life experiences and weaves them into power packed encounters.
(The Third Thing That Killed My Father)exolores the relationship between a mute man and his friend which is revealed for what it is when the mute dies in a flood. (The Bath) is the story of a husban...more

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Aug 26, 2010 Rowland Bismark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think . . . the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough.”

Mel makes this comment roughly halfway through the story, after he has told everyone that he’ll explain to them what love really is.

Carver is known for his minimalist approach to prose...more “And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think . . . the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough.”

Mel makes this comment roughly halfway through the story, after he has told everyone that he’ll explain to them what love really is.

Carver is known for his minimalist approach to prose, and for this reason he’s often compared to Ernest Hemingway and Anton Chekhov. His short stories focus on middle-class, often blue-collar people who are struggling with hard truths, disappointments, inertia, and small glimmers of hope in their ordinary lives. Along with writers such as Ann Beattie and Tobias Wolff, Carver is considered a writer of the “dirty-realism” school. Carver’s short stories are also recognizable for their abrupt endings, sometimes called “zero endings,” which do not seem to tie up the story neatly, if at all. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is one of Carver’s most famous stories and often regarded as the epitome of the dirty-realism school.

Carver and his wife divorced in 1982, and Carver married his longtime girlfriend, writer Tess Gallagher, in 1988. They were married for only a few months before Carver died from lung cancer at age fifty. After his death, his editor, Gordon Lish, claimed that he edited Carver’s work so heavily that he should be considered a coauthor of the stories. Carver’s widow, Gallagher, similarly claimed ownership of Carver’s stories and said Carver had borrowed story ideas from her own work. Such accusations, however, have not tarnished Carver’s legacy, and he remains one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

The nature of love remains elusive throughout “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” despite the characters’ best efforts to define it. Mel tries again and again to pinpoint the meaning of love, but his examples never build up to any coherent conclusion. For example, he tells his friends about an elderly couple who nearly died in a car crash, but the conclusion of the story—the old man depressed by not being able to see his wife—merely confuses everyone. When he asserts that he’ll tell everyone exactly what love is, he instead digresses into a muddled meditation about how strange it is that he and the others have loved more than one person. His attempts to clarify the nature of love eventually devolve into a bitter tirade against his ex-wife. He seems much more certain about what love is notand tells Terri several times that if abusive love is true love, then she “can have it.”

Laura and Nick believe that they know what love is, but they never really provide a clear definition or explain why they’re so certain in their convictions. They merely demonstrate their love for each other by blushing and holding hands, but these actions simply support the mystery of love rather than unmask it. Terri, of all the friends, seems to be most certain about the meaning of love and repeatedly claims that her abusive ex-boyfriend, Ed, truly loved her, despite his crazy way of showing it. The examples she provides of this love—beating, stalking, and threatening—are disturbing but serve as proof in her mind. Like the others, however, she cannot translate her certainty into any kind of clear explanation of the nature of love.

Although the four friends talk for a while about love, the fact that they never manage to define it suggests that language can’t adequately describe emotional, abstract subjects. Mel does the most talking, but his bloated stories and rambling digressions show that he has trouble conveying his thoughts and feelings, despite how much he talks. Terri speaks a great deal about her former lover Ed, but when Mel challenges her, she turns to intuition to prove her point. She believes that Ed loved her no matter what Mel or the others think, demonstrating that gut feelings about love can be more powerful and accurate than words. Laura and Nick, meanwhile, say very little about the nature of love and instead rely on physical gestures to clarify what language cannot: they hold hands, blush, and touch each other’s legs. Carver indicates that words simply aren’t enough when talking about love, which is probably why all four friends have fallen silent by the end of the story.

The sun in the story, which is bright at the beginning and gone by the end, represents the loss of clarity and happiness as the friends grow increasingly confused about the meaning of love. At the beginning of the story, Nick notes that the kitchen is bright and compares the friends to giddy children who have “agreed on something forbidden.” The talk is light and hopeful, just a friendly conversation on a gin-soaked afternoon. However, as the conversation about love becomes increasingly dark and complex, the sun in the kitchen slips slowly away. Nick notes that the sun is “changing, getting thinner,” and, not long after, that the sun is “draining out of the room.” As the sun disappears completely, the conversation devolves into Mel’s drunken threats against his ex-wife, including a fantasy of murdering her. At the end of the story, the friends are sitting in complete darkness. The sun has gone, as have their rosy, hopeful perceptions of love.(less)

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Oct 14, 2011 Vivisection rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, the-americans

I got into a drunken conversation about writing with a co-worker last night--apropos for a review of Raymond Carver, n'est pas? Anyway. I was blathering on about how I dislike Hemingway in general. I know, blasphemy for an English teacher and all. I went on to mention that, strangely, I do like Raymond Carver very much. I went on to wax poetic about What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A little tipsy and suddenly infatuated with the idea of Carver, I came home and promptly re-read this bo...more

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Dec 09, 2008 selena rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: shortstories, thebest

Having finished What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, I can understand why Carver smoked and drank himself to death. Reading the collection felt like a walk on the darker side of human nature. Please don't misunderstand, I think the man was responsible for making the story story a credible literary genre but he was tragically troubled.

I approached this book knowing that Carver is widely known for writing candidly about the blue-collar experience in his trademark minimalist (and often autob...more Having finished What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, I can understand why Carver smoked and drank himself to death. Reading the collection felt like a walk on the darker side of human nature. Please don't misunderstand, I think the man was responsible for making the story story a credible literary genre but he was tragically troubled.

I approached this book knowing that Carver is widely known for writing candidly about the blue-collar experience in his trademark minimalist (and often autobiographical) style. I felt that this collection of stories features some of Carver's best work.

This wasn't a particularly long book nor did it require hours of analysis. Nevertheless, it took me a long time to read. I tried to read a few stories each time but found my mood significantly dropping after each one. The two stories that will stay with me no matter how much time passes have to be "Bath" and "Tell the Women We're Going."

The story "Bath" is about a boy who is hit by a car on his birthday and subsequently goes into a coma. With his father and mother by his side, his chest rises and falls but his eyes stay closed. The story truly broke my heart. Upon finishing it, I couldn't read any further. I felt like I needed to walk around a little and clear my head. I regret having already forgotten the little boy's name.

The most disturbing story of them all is Carver's pseudo-horror story called "Tell the Women We're Going." Two friends, both married, who've been friends for a long time decide to leave their wives at the intimate picnic so they can go drive around for a while. Somewhere along the way, they spot two girls on a bike and decide to strike up some conversation. They figure out where the girls are going and go there ahead of them. One guy is seriously interested in cheating on his wife with the girl. The other states no intent. However, he ends up bashing their heads in with a rock...

Something about the way that the story was presented to me, disturbed me profoundly. I'm accustomed to reading about killers and horrendous murder scenes, but it sprang up on me unexpectedly. I hadn't realized the man was a monster. Probably because he seemed like a husk of a man. What I enjoy about Raymond however, is that he does not try to tell us that this is good or bad, instead he doesn't say anything. This is what makes him the author that he is - his ability to show us true life, the sad picture in the mirror looking back at mankind.

I think this is a book that I will come back to and one meant to be re-read.(less)

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Feb 18, 2008 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anybody who has ever tried beer and has a touch of melancholy.

I picked-up this book at Novel Idea when I started getting serious about writing a few years back. I just finished reading it for a second time and, though it sounds cliche, Raymond Carver is a true master of the short story. At turns dead-pan and poignant, at others hilarious and chilling, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," has sort of been my creative writing teacher over the years. What's interesting to me is how my favorites in the collection have changed this time around. Back in...more

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Dec 26, 2010 Taka rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1-fiction-you-must-read, american_lit, contemporary, japan_jul07-aug10

Awesome--

This has been on my reading list for the longest time and I finally got around to it, only to realize how dumb I'd been for putting it off for so long.

It's GOOD.

Like, really good.

Simple, lyrical, and resonant, the stories really grow on you and you find yourself sucked into them. The Carver-Lish tag team has done a wonderful job creating these golden nuggets of shorts.

Having read them, I'm amazed how much Murakami owes his style to Carver-Lish.

Eye-opening.

Highly Recommended.

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Jan 19, 2009 Jen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hopelessly desperate and deceptively simple. Great for a literary detox after Austen.

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Jun 27, 2007 Claire rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to love this book. I did, really. I just couldn't. It was stark, bleak, and pessimistic, true, which wouldn't necessarily have killed it for me if I thought he had genuinely interesting things to say. As it was, he had some intriguing story lines, so he got a three, but the insight/exceptional creativity/brilliant command of language that I was hoping for never really materialized.

People whose literary opinion I respect absolutely loved this book; maybe you're one of them. Frankly, I do...more

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May 19, 2013 Sophia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Second time around was as good as the first, although i have to say, as a collection, I think I preferred "Would you please be quiet, please?", but this collection still had some great moments. I think i liked it less because of the increase in murder-related stories; not his best. Among my favorites were "Why don't you dance?", "The Bath", A Serious Talk", "Popular Mechanics", and the eponymous story (he always puts them at the end). The beauty and quiet desperation of "A Serious Talk" struck m...more

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Mar 18, 2009 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Carver can write a spare line like nobody's business and what he doesn't say haunts you more than what he does. I knew going in that this was "dirty realism", but this little collection of sad sack stories was often too down and too dirty for me. There were some amazing gems in this that were perfect from sad start to lonely end, but in every single story someone either cheats or is cheated on or has some kind of crap-tastic tragedy befall them. It can wear a reader down. The guy sure can write,...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Sabina knox rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was about time I read some short fiction

Raymond Carver seemed like just the man for the job, specifically he’s collection of short stories What we talk about when we talk about love. There are many reasons for this decision, the main being what I had been told about the editor Gordon Lish and the re released unedited version. It could be argued that Carver style was created for him via the editing process. Although I share this opinion, I am in no way downplaying Carver. I think he is fundame...more It was about time I read some short fiction

Raymond Carver seemed like just the man for the job, specifically he’s collection of short stories What we talk about when we talk about love. There are many reasons for this decision, the main being what I had been told about the editor Gordon Lish and the re released unedited version. It could be argued that Carver style was created for him via the editing process. Although I share this opinion, I am in no way downplaying Carver. I think he is fundamentally a wonderful and insightful writer, he just did not create his style, Lish did, who in his own right was a genius. He took Carvers voice and stylised into what Carver is known for.

I found the collected stories interesting, gripping and brutally honest. Sure, one may think, "books about love, great, what a load of B.S", but that sells these amazing works of short fiction, very short. Carver's cynicism and opposing optimism makes these stories extraordinary and incredibly illuminating. The way some show you just how painful love is and how downtrodden it can make you, but also how freeing and wonderful people think love is. Though these stories show a lot more, it shows this one truth. It shows the way people feel in all kinds of relationships from all perspectives; It shows just how unpredictable and confusing love is, just like people. Carver was trying to point out this very fact. The fact that of course love is unpredictable because it is like any human emotion is an extension of who they are; so it goes without saying that of course anything people do and feel can be done in any way though any form.

------- spoiler starts ------
This is shown so well throughout the book, but the best example is in the story the book is named after; what we talk about when we talk about love. Mel and Tessie are arguing over vodka in the company of their friends about the love they had and received from their ex spouses. Tessie in all senses believed her abusive ex husband loved her to such an extent that it caused his abuse, While Mel talks what he thinks love is, you get this glimpse of what love and in extension people are; contradictions, clashes and completely different perspectives of life. Even though Mel and Tessie love each other dearly they never agree. They never decide the other is right about love and thats the point. How can anyone see or feel love the same way. This is Carvers message throughout the collection of short stories, shown so well in the story of four friends and too many bottles of vodka.
------ spoiler ends--------

In essence that is what I thought Carver was getting at. I saw all these stories and what they told me. All perfect examples of just how different love is for every situation and every person. I found this book incredible interesting and honest. it showed exactly what love is all about in pure honesty. Love is never clean perfect or dreamy. love is real and gritty and dirty, but it can be all the more amazing for that.

(less)

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Jan 25, 2013 Mel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Carver's got a very terse, direct style of writing that's always kind of at odds with how the stories skirt around the real meat of what he's saying. He never comes out with any huge revelations, and at most his stories end on an ominous note. The onus is on you to come to a conclusion, which can be nice. My problem is that after awhile all of the stories kind of read as the same. There's going to be a bad moment in a couple's relationship (usually they're going to be on the verge of divorce, or...more

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Jan 20, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 25-books-in-2013

Hemingway supposedly referred to editing as the process of "killing your own babies". If he was right, then Raymond Carver is a serial child murderer.

Carver's short stories pack an incredible punch in very little space. Taciturn scenes of drama, humor and romance unfold quickly, and in the plainest settings imaginable (usually nondescript suburban homes). Most of the stories in this, his second anthology, read like hasty police confessions. Often written in the past tense, and omitting the most...more Hemingway supposedly referred to editing as the process of "killing your own babies". If he was right, then Raymond Carver is a serial child murderer.

Carver's short stories pack an incredible punch in very little space. Taciturn scenes of drama, humor and romance unfold quickly, and in the plainest settings imaginable (usually nondescript suburban homes). Most of the stories in this, his second anthology, read like hasty police confessions. Often written in the past tense, and omitting the most horrifying details, Carver lets your imagination do a lot of the work.

His brevity and tendency to edit out the gory details could be frustrating for some. However, these traits work like the author's secret weapons. By leaving the reader to piece together the plot line (often the story's climax or resolution), Carver's stories take you to the darker corners of your mind, the thoughts we all have but wisely keep to ourselves.

Consider What We Talk About When We Talk About Love a modern day Aesop's fables. Except in these ones, the cautionary quickly becomes the bad example, the less less-lived.

Partially due to the short length and rapid pace of his stories, What We Talk About is an incredibly quick read. Carver said he favored short stories because they could be written and read in a single setting. I started the book on a 45 minute flight home, and was anxious to take any opportunity to sneak in another one of his stories. Like the best Bukowski or Hemingway, Carver's stories are gauche and slight enough to be enjoyed on the toilet--I mean that as the highest compliment.

In regards to voice, Carver wins points for consistency. Almost everyone in these stories is a flawed, frustrated, chain-smoking alcoholic; I guess Carver took the adage 'write what you know' to heart. His language, both in dialogue and prose, is remarkably natural--he is one of very few authors who actually writes like people talk. The tone is almost always nervous, but frequently turning shades of red, whether tender or malicious. And his titles, lifted from a line in each story, provide a glimpse into his offhand sense of detail:

"So Much Water So Close To Home", "Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit", "Gazebo", and "Popular Mechanics" read more like the index of a men's magazine than a short story compendium. And in a way, that is the beauty of Carver's craft. He fills the spaces between words with a weighted relativity that is impossible to turn away from. A driveway becomes a slow dance floor. A fishing trip turns tragic, gradually. In the eponymous tale, Carver opens up his characters on a coffee table lecture about love, only to leave us empty-handed.

In Raymond Carver, I found an author that was immediately relatable, engrossing, and enviably succinct. While not all of these stories will roll around in your mind after taking them on, those that do will leave you speechless, and begging for more. In the inevitable chorus of "and THEN what happened??", you're left with no choice but to turn the page and start the next round. (less)

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Jan 17, 2013 Ugh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My girlfriend tells me this book was legendarily heavily edited. She says you can get it in a before and after version, so you can see what impact the editor had. This was not that version, so I can't say anything more about it.

And I imagine I won't say anything original about the book, as I probably wouldn't be able to say anything original about anything that's legendarily anything. But nevermind.

There are 17 stories here. I quite liked six of them, and quite disliked the rest. In many of them...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Philip Connor rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

"That's it, he says End of story. I admit it's not much of a story.
I was interested, she says"

You'll never be bored reading a Carver story, at the very least you'll have that sheer reader's interest to know what happens next.

But I like stories that mean something, or try and mean something or reflect something. Carver's stories suffer sometimes from being this extract from a life, a relationship, a full story and they don't give me as a reader a view of the whole, of what he's aiming at. Occas...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Torii rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read through this short collection rather quickly. My initial reaction was that I didn't enjoy Carver as much as I initially thought, but in retrospect, it's not that I don't enjoy his work as a whole, it's that I prefer to read his stories on their own, rather than reading through an entire collection all at once. Due to the simplicity of the stories, I find I like to mull them over longer--and even discuss them, rather than absorbing them and moving on.

Two of these stories I had read alread...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Chris Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like songs about drifters and books about the same. We all know that's a Modest Mouse line, and I do and I do.
This book was introduced to me in college. My dad didn't love Raymond Carver. I do. I love the fact that he writes in a sparse style. I like the fact that every one of his characters is barely holding it together, and is one askance glance away from violence.

I like how people tell stories and say "I go" and then "he goes."

I like the fact that it describes sex, booze, and all that clin...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Russell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My intro to Raymond Carver was through Robert Altman films (he adapted his work more than once). The film Short Cuts baffled me as a youngster on how so many stories could be told at once and find a way to connect.

After that initial impression it took several more years for me to read a title of his, which turns out is a good thing because I can better appreciate his writing. The short stories in this collection is stellar. His approach is simple but the characters and their situations are comp...more

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About Raymond Carver

Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. The son of a violent alcoholic, he married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit'. A career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958 and...more

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“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.” — 19 people liked it

“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.” — 6 people liked it

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

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