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Dec 19, 2018VaughanPLNaomi rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Any lover of short fiction will appreciate Carver's mastery of the form. Using simple and clear prose, Carver creates small self-contained narratives. His focus is narrow (mainly white, suburban middle class couples and families), but he is able to draw out a variety of material from these subjects. Many stories in this collection draw on the theme of death and decay in everyday life. My favorite of the collection, "Preservation," describes a woman coming home from work to find her recently unemployed husband sleeping on the sofa while the food in their broken refrigerator melts and rots. The husband has been frozen on the couch for weeks and now the food is rotting and still he cannot thaw. The wife cooks the food and ignores the job ads in the newspaper, instead finding an auction she can attend to buy another fridge. I thought this was wonderful image for a couple with one stagnant member. This is the first collection of Carver I have read and I am excited to read more.