The Night in Question Summary
Tobias Wolff

The Night in Question Summary

The Night in Question, published in 1996, is a collection of short stories which Tobias Wolff placed in magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta and Antaeus, and in anthologies like Best American Short Stories during the first half of the 1990s. The volume includes fifteen stories which were not designed specifically for any definable group of readers. They have an appeal for mature, young adult readers because in many cases, the protagonist is a boy in his teens, and the narrative perspective combines the perceptions of the protagonist with the reflective intelligence of the author recreating the mood and moment at the origin of the experience. In several cases, they cover some of the same ground that Wolff negotiated in This Boy's Life, although he has been able here to explore the imaginative possibilities of events and incidents that required a closer connection to "actuality" in the...

(read more from the Short Guide)