Janet read and liked Trin's review of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories:

"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 (thoug...more 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 start to feel a bit samey. I definitely appreciated Carver’s writing, however, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy it; I think in future I will just limit my intake. An occasional nibble—great. A heavy meal, though—uh-oh, now you’re gonna need to lie down.(less) "