Raymond Carver (1938–1988)

A young couple buying furniture from a man's yard sale encounters the haunting remnants of his failed relationship, blending awkwardness and profound melancholy. A man recounts fragmented memories of his past relationships, revealing the quiet pain of failed intimacy and unmet expectations. A married couple's attempt to save their crumbling relationship in a squalid motel room spirals into mutual blame, guilt, and resignation. Two childhood friends reconnect as adults, but a casual outing turns disturbingly dark, revealing suppressed violence and alienation. A man recalls a tragic friendship between his father and an eccentric, lonely neighbor whose obsession with his fish stock ends in calamity. Two couples drinking around a kitchen table explore the nature of love through contrasting stories, exposing its complexity, vulnerability, and inevitable pain.

Those are the themes of just a handful of the seventeen stories comprising What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, legendary author Raymond Carver’s second major collection of short fiction and the one that made his reputation. I use the label “stories” somewhat guardedly here, because with one exception—the volume’s title story—these entries are better thought of as vignettes, or brief scenes, in larger and more complex drama that is transpiring somewhere off the page. Despite their brevity—and most tales are no longer than a half dozen pages—they pack a huge emotional punch as characters sort through the despair and wreckage of their lives due to a variety of shortcomings: alcoholism, domestic violence, infidelity, irresponsible behavior, abandonment, and so on. Indeed, there is not really an uplifting or redemptive story in the whole book, which is consistent with the “dirty realism” style of Carver’s fiction.

I will admit to being a little frustrated by the clipped nature of many of these pieces; they often left too much of the backstory context for the reader to figure out. I did admire the author’s consistent use of the “nested story” technique, in which the narrator interacts with another character who then relates his or her own tale. Also, I found two of the stories—"The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”—to be more fully developed and emotionally satisfying. On the other hand, the underdeveloped nature of “The Bath” was particularly vexing. In fact, a longer version of that story was published as “A Small, Good Thing” and included in a subsequent collection (Cathedral) to much greater effect. (The expanded version—which is the one that Carver apparently intended in the first place—became one of his most highly regarded creations.) So, although all the pieces in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are worthwhile, a reader new to Carver’s writing might start that exploration elsewhere in his estimable catalog.… (more)