These are tough, clear-eyed stories by an American original whose vision is stark, stern, philosophical and offbeat. Central to them is the struggle for survival undercut by a desperate, apathetic longing for something more. The landscape itself presses upon the cramped blue-collar lives she observes. The dialogue, with its moments of exasperated humour, is blunt, exact and always authentic. The prose is muscular, forceful, at times forced, and weighted with metaphor. Imagine a river swollen with the painful, absurd and random debris of life it sell and you have Proulx's world.
