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...defeated by a curse and by the unforgiving wind; a boy gives his life to the empty and futile myth of the western bullrider, the memory of his abandoning father inescapable. Like the bareboned land from which they grew, the Close Range stories open themselves up entirely to the reader, exposing naked nerve. In becoming one of our finest short story writers, Proulx has learned to strip away the enigma that shields personality, to expose memory and personality, somehow in her search for the authentically tragic to remain as dispassionately powerful, and as intimate, as nature...
...Want a Drink of Water," tells of the way a family of cowboy brothers viciously castrate a severely crippled man: Proulx comments, "Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that." The reader should be grateful that Proulx does not often drop into this kind of openly reflective tone: she is at her best when carefully texturing rural life, when she tells her stories without wavering or flinching, without intruding into lives so deeply touching and so very distant and unchangeable they seem...
...defeated by a curse and by the unforgiving wind; a boy gives his life to the empty and futile myth of the western bullrider, the memory of his abandoning father inescapable. Like the bareboned land from which they grew, the Close Range stories open themselves up entirely to the reader, exposing naked nerve. In becoming one of our finest short story writers, Proulx has learned to strip away the enigma that shields personality, to expose memory and personality, somehow in her search for the authentically tragic to remain as dispassionately powerful, and as intimate, as nature...
Boston Teran's debut novel is brutal. His descriptions of evil and horror are so fierce, I found, at times, it was a struggle to continue reading. The violence is excessive, taking the reader into a world of hard-core drugs, murder, rape, child pornography and terrifying cult mentality. Teran obviously feels there are worse things than death, and he captures many of these within his pages. And yet, I read the book in less than 24 hours. Through all the gore and desolation, Teran managed to force me to care about the two protagonists, and in the world that...
...power, and perhaps in death and evil as ways of obtaining and maintaining it. However, while these philosophical debates are not as gripping as the rest of the novel, the do not take away from Teran's amazing character development and they allow a few brief moments for the reader to rest and regroup before plunging back into the maelstrom of violence...