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1.94k reviews for:
What We Talk about When We Talk about Love / Beginners (A Vintage Short)
Raymond Carver
3.83 AVERAGE
1.94k reviews for:
What We Talk about When We Talk about Love / Beginners (A Vintage Short)
Raymond Carver
3.83 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read Cathedral a while ago and I don’t remember a considerable amount about the slim volume of short stories other than I could appreciate them. With What We Talk About When We Talk About Love I found myself really reaching to enjoy this set which technically came before Cathedral. It felt like Flannery O’Connor all over again. You read their later, better works, then circle back to find the earlier collections lacking. While I appreciate what Carver was doing, apparently it’s not my cup of tea. As someone who loves the flowery language of Virginia Woolf, it’s hard to enjoy the stark minimalism that Carver uses. I found myself searching for the meaning of his stories and, for the most part, thought most of the endings were jarring and unexplainable.
I remember in college having a creative writing professor who lived and died by Carver’s words. In later years, this made me curious about the author. In conjunction with Goodreads' yearly book challenge, I try to keep a healthy mix of novels, short story collections, graphic novels, and nonfiction. It’s not the easiest in the world for me to jump into short stories, even though as a creative writing minor, that’s all I ever seemed to write. At moments, I don’t think I could categorize some of these stories as short stories. They're more like flash fiction. Many didn’t clock in over a handful of pages and mind you the pages are squat with large lettering. At least, for the most part, it kept me from overly struggling through them because I knew the next one was only a page away.
There were a few short stories that I liked. By far the strongest were: “Why Don’t You Dance”, “Gazebo”, “The Bath”, and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. I say this only because something actually happens in these stories. I feel like the characters were fully dimensional characters and if there were ambiguous endings, they didn’t trounce the entirety of the short story itself. I loved the quiet absurdity of “Why Don’t You Dance” with the imagery of the man’s bedroom laid out precisely in the yard. “The Bath” was gut-wrenching and heartbreaking for the mother of the injured little birthday boy. I can see why this collection is titled after “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. This story really got at the heart of one of the concepts that threads its needle throughout the collection: love. It was interesting to see the different ideas of love being bandied about why the couples. There was love that made one want to kill themselves or the one they love. There was the ‘honeymoon’ love. And there was the love that’s there despite the day-to-day annoyances.
There were others that were fairly okay like: “Sacks”, “Tell the Women We’re Going”, and “The Third Thing that Killed My Father Off”. These were of lesser quality, in my opinion, than the previous titles mentioned. The rest of them, at least to this reader, were rubbish. Again, many of them were so short I couldn’t fully get into them. Flash Fiction is great as long as you seize the reader as soon as possible, but these certainly didn’t do that.
If you want to know the themes of these short stories it’s pretty simple: booze and love. Every character needed a drink in their hand, be it whiskey or gin. Every character who drank couldn’t love in the way they needed to love and made terrible choices either because of the drinking or told their tale of selfishness or self-sabotage with a drink to their lips. Carver certainly has a complicated relationship with the concept of love. There was nary a couple in these short stories that truly loved each other, but that’s okay. Love is a complicated thing and I think Carver does a fairly good job of highlighting what takes place after the ‘honeymoon’ phase when the sheen has rubbed off and we’re left with something a bit dingy with its cracks showing.
I can’t say that I particularly liked this collection of short stories. There were moments here and there that were revealing, intriguing, or shocking. Those moments were few and far between. I’m not someone who has to like or root for the characters to enjoy them, but this collection felt a little ironic because it just didn’t feel that there was much love for the stories themselves. I’m also clearly not a fan of minimalism. When there’s no meat on the bones it can feel a little too cold. Carver has his moments, but this reader didn’t find enough of them to amount to much.
I remember in college having a creative writing professor who lived and died by Carver’s words. In later years, this made me curious about the author. In conjunction with Goodreads' yearly book challenge, I try to keep a healthy mix of novels, short story collections, graphic novels, and nonfiction. It’s not the easiest in the world for me to jump into short stories, even though as a creative writing minor, that’s all I ever seemed to write. At moments, I don’t think I could categorize some of these stories as short stories. They're more like flash fiction. Many didn’t clock in over a handful of pages and mind you the pages are squat with large lettering. At least, for the most part, it kept me from overly struggling through them because I knew the next one was only a page away.
There were a few short stories that I liked. By far the strongest were: “Why Don’t You Dance”, “Gazebo”, “The Bath”, and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. I say this only because something actually happens in these stories. I feel like the characters were fully dimensional characters and if there were ambiguous endings, they didn’t trounce the entirety of the short story itself. I loved the quiet absurdity of “Why Don’t You Dance” with the imagery of the man’s bedroom laid out precisely in the yard. “The Bath” was gut-wrenching and heartbreaking for the mother of the injured little birthday boy. I can see why this collection is titled after “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. This story really got at the heart of one of the concepts that threads its needle throughout the collection: love. It was interesting to see the different ideas of love being bandied about why the couples. There was love that made one want to kill themselves or the one they love. There was the ‘honeymoon’ love. And there was the love that’s there despite the day-to-day annoyances.
There were others that were fairly okay like: “Sacks”, “Tell the Women We’re Going”, and “The Third Thing that Killed My Father Off”. These were of lesser quality, in my opinion, than the previous titles mentioned. The rest of them, at least to this reader, were rubbish. Again, many of them were so short I couldn’t fully get into them. Flash Fiction is great as long as you seize the reader as soon as possible, but these certainly didn’t do that.
If you want to know the themes of these short stories it’s pretty simple: booze and love. Every character needed a drink in their hand, be it whiskey or gin. Every character who drank couldn’t love in the way they needed to love and made terrible choices either because of the drinking or told their tale of selfishness or self-sabotage with a drink to their lips. Carver certainly has a complicated relationship with the concept of love. There was nary a couple in these short stories that truly loved each other, but that’s okay. Love is a complicated thing and I think Carver does a fairly good job of highlighting what takes place after the ‘honeymoon’ phase when the sheen has rubbed off and we’re left with something a bit dingy with its cracks showing.
I can’t say that I particularly liked this collection of short stories. There were moments here and there that were revealing, intriguing, or shocking. Those moments were few and far between. I’m not someone who has to like or root for the characters to enjoy them, but this collection felt a little ironic because it just didn’t feel that there was much love for the stories themselves. I’m also clearly not a fan of minimalism. When there’s no meat on the bones it can feel a little too cold. Carver has his moments, but this reader didn’t find enough of them to amount to much.
These stories make me feel like I stepped into an old school macho vibe and it's somehow comfy. Each story is exactly as much as I want it to be and I find myself going back to them.
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
fast-paced
Who knew the space between words could be so vast? This book captures the elusiveness and beauty of love as well its ugliness.