Heart Songs and Other Stories

This article is about the Annie Proulx book. For the Weezer song, see Weezer (2008 album). For the Dolly Parton album, see Heartsongs: Live from Home. For Jess Williamson album, see Heart Song.

Heart Songs

Reprint of 1988 1st edition
Author	Annie Proulx
Language	English
Publisher	Scribner
Publication date	March 17, 1995
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	224 pp
ISBN	978-002036075 {{isbn}}: Check isbn value: length (help)

Heart Songs and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Annie Proulx first published in 1988 by Simon & Schuster as Heart Songs. This paperback edition was published in 1995 by Scribner in 1995. ^[1] Most of the stories in the 1994 collection had previously been published as Heart Songs and Other Stories in 1988. ^[2]

Stories

Those stories originally published in periodicals are indicated where they “appeared in somewhat different form.” ^[3]

• On the Antler ( Harrowsmith , 1983)
• Stone City ( Gray's Sporting Journal , 1979)
• Bedrock
• A Run of Bad Luck (Ploughshares, Vol. 13, No. 2/3 (1987), pp. 177-189, 1987)
• Heart Songs ( Esquire , October 1 1986)
• The Unclouded Day
• In the Pit
• The Wer-Trout (Esquire, June 1 1982)
• A Country Killing ( The Atlantic Monthly , November 1994)
• Negatives

Reception

Kirkus reviews offers a mixed assessment of Proulx’ s first collection of short stories, describing them as “expertly commanding in their detail of the daily life of farming and hunting, but offering little by way of originality of idea.” The reviewer closes with the caveat: “Sharp-eyed in their execution, but often less so in what lies beneath.” ^[4]

Los Angeles Times critic Charles Solomon observes:

Proulx writes with a rare grace that never calls attention to itself but leaves the reader to savor such phrases as, “ . . . the afternoon light had a dying, year’s end quality, a rich apricot color as though it fell through a cordial glass onto an oak table, the kind of day hunters remember falsely as October.” ^{[5] [6]}

Footnotes

1. "Heart songs / E. Annie Proulx". National Library of Australia . Retrieved 20 February 2011.
2. Heart Songs and Other Stories. Simon & Schuster. 17 March 1995. ISBN   978-0-02-036075-9. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 20 February 2011. 16 July 2011
3. Proulx, 1995: Publication details opposite Contents page: “The following stories [published in periodicals] appeared in somewhat different form.”
4. Kirkus Reviews. "HEART SONGS And Other Stories". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
5. Solomon, 1990
6. Proulx, 1995 p. 38

Sources

• Proulx, Annie. 1995. Heart Songs and Other Stories. Scribner Paperback Fiction, New York. ISBN   0020360754
• Solomon, Charles. 1990. Los Angeles Times , March 4, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-04-bk-2478-story.html Accessed October 6, 2025.