This latest collection of Mr. Carver's short stories [What We Talk About When We Talk About Love] and the clear, contemporary vision it gives of the American soul is at once chilling and unforgettably powerful. Carver's stories take us into the lives of everyday people but they are characters on the cusp between oppressive normalcy and psychic despair, and at their best or worst, Carver's people only vaguely seem to sense their predicament. There's a Chekhovian clarity to Ray Carver's stories but a Kafkaesque sense that something is terribly wrong behind the scenes….
Raymond Carver is the consummate master of Now. There are no getaways of hope allowed into the future or back into the past. His immense skill as a writer forces us to constantly face up. If there was something akin to a "new wave" in American fiction, this would be it. He gives us pathos and satire without black humor, simplicity of craft juxtaposed with complexity of emotion.
And, what do we talk about when we talk about love? Two couples sit around a bucket of ice and a bottle of gin in a kitchen in Albuquerque before they go out to dinner at "the new place." There's talk of violent love, passive love, new love, old love, sexual love, adjusted love, love to commit suicide over, but there's no consensus on love amongst the drunken four. The lure of the story is that it draws the reader inextricably into the question of love, and before long we feel as speechless as the narrator…. The thing is, Carver beautifully demonstrates that we talk all sorts of ways about love but when the chips are down many of us haven't the slightest notion what it means.
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