The cool streamlined style of this modern master of the short story has spawned
dozens of younger writers who seek to follow in Carver's footsteps. But where the
Brat Pack frequently produces flat, unresonating fiction, Carver has the ability
to render graceful prose from dreary, commonplace, scraping-the-bottom human misery.
This collection consists of 30 stories selected from four previous volumes, and
seven new tales. Appearing in order of original publication, they reflect Carver's
developmentfrom 1963 to the present. We meet many of his characters just as something
dear to them is slipping away. Jobs, cars, the affection of a spouse or child,
the routine of lifeall can be lost. Even in the more upbeat stories, a narrator
recalls a happy occasion that, in retrospect, marked a change for the worse, or
a high point in a life since gone sour. In Carver's world, ashtrays overflow, wives
are usually ex-, and drinkers are drunks. Seedy and dishonest characters are glimpsed
in the process of once again doing the wrong thing. One of the new stories, "The Errand,"
which is in part an account of Chekhov's death, is offered as a tip of the hat to the
great short story writer. Even here, with more affecting and finished prose than ever
before, Carver's rendering gives us all the intimacy of a medical chart. Aptly named,
he is a carver of flesh from the bone.

The last story collection published during Carver's life (he died in 1988) contains
most of his greatest hits from his earlier books, as well as seven stories that hadn't
been collected up to that point. The breadth of the collection makes these 37 stories
an extremely complete map of Carver territory, of a particular area of America and of
the specific texture of the people Carver writes about -- their difficult attempts at
survival in a world where happiness does not arrive wrapped up in neat packages but
comes in far more peculiar parcels, if it comes at all.

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