Who Would Like This Book:
If you're hungry for stories steeped in grit, bleak beauty, and the raw power of the American West, Annie Proulx delivers in spades. Her writing paints Wyoming’s wide-open spaces in haunting detail, capturing the hardship, humor, and strange poetry of ranch life. This collection is a must for fans of literary fiction, short stories, or anyone curious about lives shaped by isolation, rough justice, and unrelenting landscapes. And of course, if Brokeback Mountain struck a chord, the original short story is every bit as moving - and perhaps even more heart-wrenching - than the film.
Who May Not Like This Book:
Some readers found the relentless bleakness a bit overwhelming - misery, violence, and bitter landscapes can wear you down if you’re hoping for hope or redemption. The stories often feel emotionally distant, with characters who are hard to love and endings that can be abrupt or unsatisfying. And if you crave tightly interwoven collections or traditional story arcs, you might find Proulx’s fragmented approach frustrating. This isn’t a feel-good read by any stretch.
About:
'Close Range: Wyoming Stories' by Annie Proulx is a collection of short stories set in Wyoming, portraying the harsh, rugged lives of cowboys, ranch hands, and their families in unforgiving conditions. The stories delve into themes of poverty, violence, isolation, and the struggle for survival against a brutal landscape. Proulx's writing style is noted for its spare, clear sentences that vividly evoke the wilderness of the American West, painting a stark and bleak picture of life in Wyoming.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include themes of violence, emotional distress, mental illness, sexual themes, and harsh life circumstances.
Has Romance?
Romance is present in the collection, with varying degrees shown, particularly notable in 'Brokeback Mountain' where it is portrayed in a poignant and tragic light.
From The Publisher:
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short story collections of our time.
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below," a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home. In "Brokeback Mountain," the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world's violent intolerance.
These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes-confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty-with the more benign values of the new west.
Stories in Close Range have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and GQ. They have been selected for the O. Henry Stories 1998 and The Best American Short Stories of the Century and have won the National Magazine Award for Fiction. This is work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.
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What can you read after
Close Range: Wyoming Stories?
About the Author:
Annie Proulx is the author of eight books, including the novel The Shipping News and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Her most recent novel is Barkskins. She lives in Seattle.
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