Vision and technique come exhilaratingly together in Bobbie Ann Mason's collection of stories [Shiloh and Other Stories]. She is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader. Less tragically gloomy than Raymond Carver, Mason nonetheless resembles that fine writer in the way she lays bare the heart of a domestic drama; and like him she holds up for our inspection a whole class of unremarkable people who are seldom noticed in fiction. (p. 39)
Bobbie Ann Mason is wonderfully even-handed and nonjudgmental in the handling of her characters, male as well as female. They are what they are, she seems to say, as restless women strain against the confines of marriage, as restless men take off in pickup trucks for Texas or the Rockies, leaving their women stuck with more rent than they can afford to pay. Her interest in them is both friendly and detached—and it extends to cats and ancient, ailing dogs … and to mechanical objects as well: an injured truck-driver's rig "sits in the backyard, like a gigantic bird that has flown home to roost." She avoids extended descriptions, depending upon a few exactly observed details to establish her situations and scenes.
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