 First edition cover | |
| Author | Tobias Wolff |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | March 28, 2008 |
| ISBN | 978-1-4000-4459-7 |
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories is a collection of thirty-one short stories by American author Tobias Wolff published in 2008. [1] [2] The collection is divided into two sections: Selected Stories and New Stories. It also contains a brief preface titled "A Note from the Author" in which Wolff defends his decision to edit some of the previously published stories.
The Selected Stories section contains twenty-one previously published stories. The table of contents in the collection just lists the story titles. Below, these are given as well as the volume in which they were previously published or collected:
From In the Garden of the North American Martyrs:
From Back in the World (1985)
From The Night in Question (1996):
The New Stories section contains ten stories:
In "Eyes Wide Open", Liesl Schillinger, writing for the New York Times, said of the collection "In these and other stories about husbands and wives, rich kids and poor kids, military men and working mothers, compromised academics and callous businessmen, all brought by circumstance to some crux of moral reckoning Wolff's voice is unfailingly authentic, while his embrace of the variety of American experience is knowing, forgiving and all-encompassing." [3] The Kirkus Reviews spoke of the "impressive range" of Wolff's subjects which are "distilled into crisp, urgent little dramas." The reviewer identified "Richard Yates, Raymond Carver and Robert Stone" as contemporary writers whose work Wolff's most resembles, saying "Like their best work, his own exhibits classic richness and depth." [4]
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