Our Story Begins

Starred review from December 3, 2007
Wolff's first story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
(1981), was a major salvo in the short story renaissance that included Raymond Carver. The 10 spare, elegant new stories here, collected with 21 stories from Wolff's three previous collections, are as good as anything Wolff has done. In most, there is a moment of realization, less a startling epiphany than a distant, gradual ache of understanding, that changes how the character looks at the world. The retired, 41-year-old female Marine of “A Mature Student,” compares her female professor's experiences in Communist-era Prague and her own son's service in Iraq. “Deep Kiss” movingly chronicles the fractious results when a teenaged boy, infatuated with a promiscuous classmate, neglects to bond with his dying father. A hilarious description of a brash, ignorant thug in “Her Dog” shows Wolff's gift for demotic speech. In an author's note, Wolff says that since he has never considered any of his stories “sacred texts,” he has edited some “clumsy or superfluous” passages in earlier works. In all the stories, Wolff expertly uses irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life.

January 1, 2008
A long-recognized master of the short story genre, Wolff brings together 21 favorite stories culled fromthree previous collections and adds, for this occasion, 10 new stories never before gathered in book form. This retrospective of his three-decades-long careertestifiesto the short story being his natural agent for personal expression. The opening story, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, a widely acknowledged masterpiece, satirizesacademe, specifically the pretensions inherent in professorial posturing, at the same time sensitively understanding a college professor who gets her quiet revenge against merciless colleagues. Wolffs understanding of the tender aspects of charactersurfacesin another masterpiece, SoldiersJoy, which is set on a military base, and, in parallel with the previously discussed story, pecking order rules the day and everyones life.In any story, in all of them, Wolff dexterously probes, in immaculately clear prose, the coreof ordinary peoplespassions and vulnerabilities.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)