Close Range: Wyoming Stories Book

Annie Proulx published her first novel, Postcards in 1991; her second, The Shipping News, won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 and in 1997 her third novel, Accordion Crimes, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Close Range: Wyoming Stories is her second collection of short stories, including the acclaimed novella, "Brokeback Moutain". Described by one critic as a "profanely poetic and beautiful elegy on doomed manhood," this story of love and sex--"a shared and sexless hunger"--between two cowboys exemplifies the world of Close Range. "If you can't fix it you've got to stand it": that could be the motto of any one of these eleven tales of lives lived out in the relentless, sometimes sickening, brutality of ranch and range. From "The Half-Skinned Steer" (take the title literally) to "55 Miles to the Gas Pump" and "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water", bodies (often male) are broken and mangled; a nervous woman throws her baby daughter away and a prodigal son rots with gangrene; women are confused with bulls, lovemaking with riding a rodeo. Grotesque, damaged: lost bodies, and dreams, are the themes of this relentless and skilfully crafted book. Far from revelling in the violence, and loss, they uncover, these stories think it through--take the reader towards the poetry and compassion which is the hallmark of Proulx's writing. --Vicky LebeauRead More