Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories Summary and Reviews

Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
by Raymond Carver

Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $7.87
You Save: $8.08 (51%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.94 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


or

Book Summary Information

Author: Raymond Carver
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1989-06-18
ISBN: 0679722319
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Vintage

Book Reviews of Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories

Book Review: Photo stories
Summary: 4 Stars

Have you ever had one of those Blair moments when after weeks of being nice to everyone you have to finally make a decision which means that enemies are made as they see a must have dismissed? Well this is one of those moments. I have been struggling with Raymond Carver's "Where I'm Calling From" a collection of thirty-seven stories chosen from several previous collections published over 20 odd years which should therefore be an ideal introduction to his work. And... wait for it... I am going to abandon it unfinished half way despite him being seen As "the American Chekhov or the laureate of the dispossessed"

Let me say up front, that his prose, ear for dialogue and depiction of the ordinariness of every day life masking unexpressed pain and joy is the best. His stories are like photos that capture the moment frozen with no past or future with all the ambiguity that the unknown allows the reader/observer. The opposite of Norman Rockwell homeliness, more akin to the photos of Walker Evans of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But they have no plot, twists, surprises, or surface complexity of character. These are often blue collar workers in small-town or rural settings struggling with jobs, partners, children and booze and it's the unsaid that reveals more then the fractured words.

The stories reflect his own drink problems and failed jobs and marriage in his 20s so he turned to writing to escape and short stories could get something in quickly to pay the rent and get food on the table. His life did begin to turn around and his work started to get critical alarm in his 40's before he died of lung cancer. His accessible prose, realistic situations and comprehensible characters are seen as a counter to egghead experimentalism

But for me, I was left all too often thinking yes and what happens next even while the image created hung in my head. I also think that stories ripped from their original magazine context make the stories work harder then they needed to. I would have welcomed an edition that merged the stories with a set of photographs worthy of the writing. However, if you want to dip in and perhaps read a couple a stories a week or if you enjoy short stories then this is a book for you. As you say at the end of a failed relationship its not you it's me, and lets remain friends. Knowing it's really about the lack of passion. Yet the spurned has the chance of real love else where...will that be you?

Literature & Fiction Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Epic Short Story Collections
Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (Books of Wonder) ImageTales of Edgar Allan Poe (Books of Wonder)
by Edgar Allan Poe
HarperCollins; Published: 1991-10-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.24
Price in other shops: $24.99
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions (P.S.) ImageSmoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions (P.S.)
by Neil Gaiman
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.28
Price in other shops: $14.95
The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain ImageThe Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
Digireads.com; Published: 2008-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.64
Price in other shops: $16.99
Interpreter of Maladies ImageInterpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 2000-05-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.88
Price in other shops: $24.00
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories ImageOur Story Begins: New and Selected Stories
by Tobias Wolff
Knopf; Published: 2008-03-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.50
Price in other shops: $26.95
Complete Short Stories (Penguin Classics) ImageComplete Short Stories (Penguin Classics)
by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2005-01-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops: $17.00
Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories ImageWhere I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 1989-06-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops: $15.95
The Elephant Vanishes: Stories ImageThe Elephant Vanishes: Stories
by Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 1994-06-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.30
Price in other shops: $14.95
Jesus' Son: Stories by ImageJesus' Son: Stories by
by Denis Johnson
Harper Perennial; Published: 1993-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops: $12.00
Runaway: Stories ImageRunaway: Stories
by Alice Munro
Knopf; Published: 2004-10-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.62
Price in other shops: $27.50
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West ImageBlood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
Vintage; Published: 1992-05-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops: $14.95
Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories ImageFires: Essays, Poems, Stories
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 1989-06-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.44
Price in other shops: $12.95
Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose ImageCall If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 2001-01-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.12
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Things They Carried ImageThe Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
Broadway; Published: 1998-12-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops: $14.95
The Complete Stories ImageThe Complete Stories
by Flannery O'Connor
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1971-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $17.00
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Stories ImageWill You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Stories
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 1992-06-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
Jesus' Son: Stories by ImageJesus' Son: Stories by
by Denis Johnson
Harper Perennial; Published: 1993-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.60
Price in other shops: $12.00
Cathedral ImageCathedral
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 1989-06-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Stories of John Cheever ImageThe Stories of John Cheever
by John Cheever
Vintage; Published: 2000-05-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.66
Price in other shops: $17.95
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories ImageWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories
by Raymond Carver
Vintage; Published: 1989-06-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.74
Price in other shops: $12.95