Reviews

Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Robert Altman, Raymond Carver

marion's review against another edition

2.0

*read for literature classes*

j'ai juste vraiment aimé qu'une nouvelle et le poème... le reste était soit meh, soit dubitatif soit je comprenais pas ce que ça foutait là (la nouvelle sur l'aspirateur ???????)

drewbagelz's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

amyappy's review against another edition

4.0

I absolutely Raymond Carver. His stories are deceptively easy to read; they are always surprising and make me think. This particular set of his stories is interesting--I think I maybe need to read the film by Robert Altman to understand the connections that he's going for here. My favorites are "A Small, Good Thing" and "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?"

koreilly's review against another edition

4.0

Man, sometimes it feels like being married in the suburbs is actually soul crushing. Wow, makes you think. What a trenchant insight Mr Carver. I mean... wow!

But in all seriousness this is a solid collection of 'matter-of-fact' stories of dissolving marriages and people's lives crumbling around them. There are a few standouts 'A Small Good Thing' being the ultimate body blow (tho kind of a cheat tbh) but often they kind of run together into a series of bad husbands drinking and sad wives thinking.

neilsarver's review against another edition

4.0

I read this collection before in the mid-'90s. It's a lot different returning to it. The sense of vignette is much more appealing to me now. I might actually read more Carver this time.

quercus707's review against another edition

3.0

I didn't care much for the collection, mostly a bunch of schmucky overgrown boys who never figured out how to be men. But A Small, Good Thing was beautiful and devastating, and So Much Water So Close to Home was ugly and devastating. They were the best of the lot.

yara_aly's review against another edition

5.0

“They stayed there. They held each other. They leaned into the door as if against a wind, and braced themselves.”

nickdleblanc's review against another edition

4.0

There are a lot of cigarettes, beer, and instances of silent menace in this collection—which should be no surprise to any reader of Carver. It’s a collection put together due to Altman’s use of Carver work as the basis for his film of the same name, a film Paul Thomas Anderson would internalize and regurgitate a few years later in a tighter and less shaggy package titled “Magnolia.” Carver, though he can fall into habits which are easily lampooned or mocked, really knows how to end a story and to pack his spare prose with a looming sense of unease and danger. He confirms a suspicion that a main character is going to do something awful to a pair of young girls in one story by saying, “He never knew what Jerry wanted. But it started and ended with a rock.” The story then ends one sentence later. My favorite stories in the collection take up the center of the book: Vitamins, Will You Please be Quiet Please?, and So Much Water So Close to Home. The latter of which being one of the best short stories I have ever read, I’d love to talk about it more but it has to be read unspoiled. The problems I had with the book are common problems with short story collections: recycled turns of phrase, characterizations, and similar imagery. All authors repeat themes. This format just can make it particularly obvious, especially when it was cobbled together from other collections as this one has been. Carver also uses a few questionable racial epithets in his narration rather than in the voice of a character, which has certainly not aged well. All told, a good collection from a great writer who trimmed all the fat from his stories but was still able to pack them with a serious energy bubbling just under the surface.
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tl;dr—Good short story collection, I recommend the book for fans of spare short stories, ie Hemingway, etc. though there is a content warning, not much explicit description of anything violent, but a whole lot of implied and sensed danger, could definitely be triggering for some. I super huge ultra recommend the film for pretty much anyone. Altman is a master.

obscuredbyclouds's review against another edition

3.0

This was my first foray into Raymond Carver's oeuvre. I expected to love this because of what I'd read about his writing and several of my favourite authors citing him as an inspiration. Clean, sleek minimalist short stories that pack a punch sounded just like my kind of thing.

And there were some brilliant stories, most notably "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" (what an amazing title too!), but others I found not really going anywhere. Also, due to the very minimalist style and the briefness, I had trouble to connect to the characters, and in general I love character-driven stories the most.

I'd definitely be interested in reading more Carver but I wasn't as wowed as I'd hoped to be.

strwbrry_jamm's review against another edition

There are actually some incredible stories in here. There isn’t any in particular that I’d call bad but some are less engaging then others. There’s a select few I’d like to reread soon and seeing as how I had to read this for a class I probably will. The one about the husband cross dressing (I know that wasn’t the focus but still) really resonated with me and I loved how it was just casually mentioned and dropped in the same paragraph.