Twenty one short stories brilliantly told in the briefest of ways. Perfect reading for those short journeys!
May 2010 Guest Editor John Boyne on Tobias Wolff...
Whenever I want a quick fix of writerly brilliance, I open Our Story Begins, Wolff’s collected stories. Always surprising, always moving, each story is the work of a master. His novel Old School is a brilliant tale of young aspiring writers in a New England school.
Our Story Begins - New and Selected Stories Synopsis
Our Story Begins combines twenty-one of Tobias Wolff's classic stories with ten potent new works, spanning three decades and confirming Wolff's status as a master of the genre. These stories of war, morality, frustration, loneliness and love trace a path through the everyday and the extraordinary, shedding a poignant yet hopeful light on American life and the intricate truths of human nature.
'Great is an overused word but Tobias Wolff justifies it. This is an essential book which demonstrates the enduring talent of a truly great writer' Spectator
'Masterly Nothing happens and yet everything happens in less than nine pages. The effect is devastating' Sunday Telegraph
'To read a Tobias Wolff story is to sink into the soft seat of your grandfather's strong, modest old Buick and let yourself be carried through an America of small towns, small joys, small struggles and small despairs - a landscape so familiar as to be invisible, the landscape of homeland' New York Times
'Lucid, funny, sad, never knowingly overstated, his best stories are small miracles of writerly technique the best introduction to this fine writer's fiction' Guardian
Author
About Tobias Wolff
Tobias Wolff is the author of seven previous books and the editor of The Vintage Book of American Short Stories and other anthologies. Among his honors are the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award, both for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University.
