Fine Just the Way It Is

Starred review from May 26, 2008
The steely Proulx (The Shipping News
, etc.) returns with another astonishing series of hardscrabble lives lived in the sparse, inhospitable West, where one mistake can put you on a long-winding trail to disaster. “Family Man” is set in the Mellowhorn Home for old cowboys and aging ranch widows, where resident curmudgeon Ray Forkenbrock shares memories of his father with his granddaughter and an eavesdropping caretaker; the secret he reveals gives new meaning to the word “relative.” In two demonically clever riffs on human weakness, “I've Always Loved This Place” and “Swamp Mischief,” the Devil, accompanied by his secretary, Duane Fork, must entertain himself thinking up new ways to bother the living and the dead, as temptation is no longer a necessary evil. Saving the best for last, “Tits-up in a Ditch” breaks new literary ground with the gut-wrenching tale of an Iraq veteran who returns to her family raw with grief. Pioneer homesteaders facing drought and debt give way to modern-day hippies trying to lose themselves in the vanishing wilderness and real estate developers out to make a buck—unforgettable characters in nine stories that range in tone from crude cowboy humor to heartbreaking American tragedy.

October 27, 2008
Will Patten is a fine actor who fits voice and pace to the tone of each story in this collection. He is often a quiet, dreamy narrator, but when stories slowly navigate toward a terrible, heart-in-mouth tension—as Proulx’s so often do—he assumes a breathiness that significantly heightens the drama. As tale-teller, Patten has a slight Western accent; this sounds right, but also enables him to use a range of dialects as appropriate for each character. In a more straightforward manner, he narrates Proulx’s amusing (though less successful) tales of the Devil redesigning Hell. Proulx, best known for Shipping News
and Brokeback Mountain
, turns out prose as exquisite as ever in her wrenching tales of Wyoming, past and present. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, May 26).