Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

Really enjoyed reading this collection. Wolff knows how to keep you turning the pages. I appreciate Amazon offering collections like this at a great price.

Tobias writes beautifully. Each one of these stories is a small miracle of expression. Reading this collection of stories will create strong feelings of empathy toward our common human plight. I also encourage you to read his masterpieces “In Pharaoh’s Army” and “This Boy’s Life”. Tobias Wolff is a superb stylist treasure you should not miss. He will enrich your life.

I bought this book for Mortals, which I would rate 5 stars. This is a collection of stories written during a couple decades so there is variety and development as life changed the author. It is also representative of the author’s total body of work because they aren’t all recently written, new stories. There are some stories that do not have the typical story structure of rising conflict, resolution, and denouement. Some stories have more impact than others and some are livelier than others. This collection pulls together stories that may have been published elsewhere but some have never been published. As such you may find here a story that you always loved and a story you never read. Tobias Wolff writes in the forward about whether he has reworked or edited any of these stories. You’ll have to read to find out.

Tobias Wolff's latest collection of short stories, written over a period of thirty years, contains twenty-one previously published in book form with ten new stories added. The characters and situations are diverse although a good many stories take place in the snow; as one character says, however-- and I tend to agree with him-- snow is much overrated. I also agree with the writer Edward P. Jones whose definition of a good short story is one that "the world, for even one character, has shifted, whether to a large or a tiny degree." These stories (at least practically all of them) would interest Mr. Jones. In some of them the shift is enormous: a bank customer is shot in the head by a robber; one hunter shoots a friend, a fellow hunter; a young man in an act of definace paints a white picket fence red; a professor, having learned that she has been duped into interviewing for a teaching position that the search committee has already decided on, veers from her canned lecture on the Marshall Plan into an extemporaneous speech about the barbarism of the Iroquois. In others the world moves inside the head of the character. In "Awaiting Orders" a sergeant realizes that he is ashamed to take a woman and her child home with him, not because he has a male lover, but because she will see that he doesn't care for the lover as much as the lover cares for him. "What he feared, what he could not allow, was for her to see how Dixon [his lover] looked at him, and then to see that he coud not give back what he received. That things between them were unequal, and himself unloving." A man at the death watch for his mother no longer knows how to be a son but can be a father. Mr. Wolff writes about relationships, the "shakiness" of families, young love, betrayal, characters who are down and out although they seldom whine-- in a word often decent people. One of my favorite stories is "The Night in Question," a beautiful moving account of a brother and sister who had an abusive father. The siblings are worlds apart because the brother has gone off the deep end with religion but still so close because of their love for each other. It bears reading again and again. Wolff's seamless transparent prose is for the most part free of metaphor although older people have "wintry smiles" and a "wide woman" on a bus has flesh under her arms that "swings like hammocks." These stories are not for the lazy reader for they are as subtle and complex as anything Henry James ever wrote although Mr. Wolff certainly is a master of the short story himself.

I generally do not read short stories. I made an exception and read this. It is terrific stuff. The stories go where you dont think they will. And end...well, what can I say? This guy is such a good writer. This is my 3rd book that I have read of his. I'm sure I'll be reading more.

I have the 11 disc audio CD, and I'm amazed that none of the disks say what stories are on them. Unless I lost something there was no separate track listing included with the package either. This is idiotic. I'm looking forward to listening to this, but if I want to skip a story or quickly tell what it is I'm hearing, or easily replay a particular story, I have to hunt around for the right disk and file. It's like leaving out the table of contents and story titles from the printed book.

Normally I like stories to have a clear ending, not leave me with questions. However this is the first book where many of the short stories left me hanging and I thoroughly enjoyed that. It even got me to write some of my own endings, which is rare and means I view the story as epic enough to continue it. Tobias Wolff is a master storyteller and I just love all these stories so much!!

The first stories are fresh and alive. Then the endings, always without a resolution, become monotonous. Although well written, these stories are generally unsatisfying because of the structure. Copy cat writers have made the Tobias Wolf story a mainstream in contemporary fiction, with indifferent results.

Excellent book/ second hand in good conditions.

Excellent book of short stories and very enjoyable to read. The number of different story lines and characters that Tobias thinks of are truly amazing and thought provoking. I would thoroughly recommend this book to anybody.

Interesting stories, well written.

great

Despite the dismal cover, all the short stories in this collection are good and some are excellent - as satisfying as a novel.