index index index index One thing you must realize about Annie Proulx--she pulls no punches. Heart Songs and Other Stories is absolutely no exception to the rule.

In this collection of short stories, Proulx give us characters that are not terribly intelligent, sophisticated, attractive, or even likable. But, what they are is real. We've all met at least one of the characters in this book, and that's the magic of Proulx's writing. She's not interested in creating a romantic hero; she's interested in telling real stories about real people ... who happen to be fictional. And, like so many of us, they have moments that aren't exactly shining.

I've read quite a bit of Proulx, and this book is one of her earlier efforts. It's not quite as stylistically refined as her later work, but it is still a magnificent read. The fact she is absolutely so willing to spit in beauty's face makes her no-nonsense stories and rough and tumble characters all the more beautiful.

If you haven't read any Proulx yet, you really should.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume II: A Collection of Short StoriesNothing will ever top Annie Proulx's THE SHIPPING NEWS, but everything this
talented woman writes is a jewel. Her short story collections are just
riveting. The stories stay with me long after I've read them. Her characters
are rich and real. Many people have said they reread her sentences because
they are so dazzling and breathtaking. It's true. I look forward to anything she
she writes, as her fiction is the best.Along with the use of active voice, something else jumped out at me the moment I had read a few pages of Proulx. She's loaded with images. Her images come mostly from apt and surprising similes. (That's not email "smilies.") As we learned in school, a simile is a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds--usually formed with 'like' or 'as.'

Her similes bring to life her descriptions of people and enhance the concrete "feel" of things and places in her stories. The first sentence of the book has two of them, maybe not the best she has to offer, but two that immediately create images that pile up as she goes along: "Hawkheel's face was as finely wrinkled as grass-dried linen, his thin back bent like a branch weighted with snow." Another reviewer (Library Journal) has pointed out how she refers to a character as "thin as a folded dollar bill, her hand as narrow and cold as a trout." Maybe these images account for some of the appeal her style has for many readers. I for one find them satisfying and stimulating, here in the short stories even more than in Shipping News.If you want to read short stories about mad, cantakerous and passionate characters, read this collection of short stories. Annie Proulx astonished us with her remakable and refreshingly original novel, "The Shipping News," and while she has stated that she is not as proficient in writing short stories as in writing novels, I disagree. I could not put down these stories of the brutal and grotesque rural landscape, and none of the stories disappoints. I look forward to reading her other collections, "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" and "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2." Ms. Proulx is fast becoming one of America's leading authors of fiction. Excellent collection of short stories by one of the very best short story writers, set in a rural community where poor country folk struggle to eke out a living. Tough, gritty stories with a deep-rooted connection to the land that give full play to the author's gift for capturing rugged, rural landscape in all its moods. Hunting and fishing provides an unusual backdrop for some of the human dramas played out: revenge, ill-will, greed, infidelity, passion and jealously, violence and death are all strong presences in these stringent stories so don't be misled by the tame hunting and fishing reference. Annie Proulx creates a cast of vivid characters - eccentric, downtrodden, down and out, malicious and conniving - bringing them alive in the space of a striking image or phrase.

A strong theme threading through several stories is the clash of values of two very different worlds: the world of wealthy outsiders from the city with their flash guns, flash hunting gear, flash cars, flash houses and unwelcome improvements impinging on the land, customs and traditions of the poor rural community, the actions of the outsiders often appearing naive, clumsy, even foolish. My personal favourite is Stone City: a hunter stumbles on a remote, derelict farm high up on the snow-covered wooded hillsides but senses an atmosphere of evil pervading the abandoned ruin, Stone City, once owned by the Stone family, old man Stone and his brood of wild, unruly offspring. Gradually, more shocking revelations about the Stones and the grim past of Stone City come to light. Try also Annie Proulx's other superb short story collection of Wyoming stories, Close Range. Both books highly recommended!
Before she wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx was already producing some of the finest short fiction in the country. Here are her collected stories, including two new works never before anthologized.

These stories reverberate with rural tradition, the rites of nature, and the rituals of small-town life. The country is blue-collar New England; the characters are native families and the dispossessed working class, whose heritage is challenged by the neorural bourgeoisie from the city; and the themes are as elemental as the landscape: revenge, malice, greed, passion. Told with skill and profundity and crafted by a master storyteller, these are lean, tough tales of an extraordinary place and its people. suria review reviews analysis analyze