A review by nickdleblanc
Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver

4.0

There are a lot of cigarettes, beer, and instances of silent menace in this collection—which should be no surprise to any reader of Carver. It’s a collection put together due to Altman’s use of Carver work as the basis for his film of the same name, a film Paul Thomas Anderson would internalize and regurgitate a few years later in a tighter and less shaggy package titled “Magnolia.” Carver, though he can fall into habits which are easily lampooned or mocked, really knows how to end a story and to pack his spare prose with a looming sense of unease and danger. He confirms a suspicion that a main character is going to do something awful to a pair of young girls in one story by saying, “He never knew what Jerry wanted. But it started and ended with a rock.” The story then ends one sentence later. My favorite stories in the collection take up the center of the book: Vitamins, Will You Please be Quiet Please?, and So Much Water So Close to Home. The latter of which being one of the best short stories I have ever read, I’d love to talk about it more but it has to be read unspoiled. The problems I had with the book are common problems with short story collections: recycled turns of phrase, characterizations, and similar imagery. All authors repeat themes. This format just can make it particularly obvious, especially when it was cobbled together from other collections as this one has been. Carver also uses a few questionable racial epithets in his narration rather than in the voice of a character, which has certainly not aged well. All told, a good collection from a great writer who trimmed all the fat from his stories but was still able to pack them with a serious energy bubbling just under the surface.
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tl;dr—Good short story collection, I recommend the book for fans of spare short stories, ie Hemingway, etc. though there is a content warning, not much explicit description of anything violent, but a whole lot of implied and sensed danger, could definitely be triggering for some. I super huge ultra recommend the film for pretty much anyone. Altman is a master.