SOURCE: Klinghoffer, David. “Warm for a While.” National Review 39, no. 23 (4 December 1987): 55-6.

In the following review of Rock Springs, Klinghoffer comments that Ford's short stories provide a fresh and powerful treatment of the theme of the basic instability of modern life.

The characters in Richard Ford's new collection of short stories [Rock Springs] do a lot of hunting, a lot of fishing. In “Children,” three teenagers stand on a river bank in Montana; Claude has just caught a whitefish, and Lucy and George stand by watching him struggle with the dying fish as he tries to pry the hook from its mouth. “What a surprise that must be,” Lucy says. “For the fish. Everything just goes crazy at once. I wonder what it thinks.” Coming halfway through the book, the scene resonates—its image, really, is at the heart of Rock Springs. What one character or another experiences...