Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 - Softcover

Praise for ‘Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2’:

‘Her images are so alert and novel she makes a world entirely her own...there are a number of stories here that show Proulx at her marvellous best...There are great pleasures to be had from this collection...the greatest pleasure is the way she does it.' Geraldine Bedell, Observer

'Performs inspired imaginative feats' Alex Clark, Sunday Times

‘Proulx writes in wonderful stews, everything thrown in together...the stories demand a second reading.' Daily Telegraph

'Her keen eye for idiosyncrasy ensures her continuing reputation as one of the shrewdest chroniclers of contemporary America.’ David Robson, Sunday Telegraph

‘The notion of a small settlement of people whose narratives, from the anecdotal to the archetypal, criss-cross like so many humming telegraph wires gives Proulx an elegant framework on which to hang these stories, whose sour sometimes brutal folksiness gains a singular resonance from the fine, sinewy prose in which they are rendered.' Jane Shilling, The Times

The fantastic new collection of stories from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Shipping News’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

‘Fine Just The Way It Is’ marks Annie Proulx's return to the Wyoming of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk. The stories are cast over centuries, and capture the voices and lives of the settlers this sagebrushed and weatherworn country has known, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears.

In 'A Family Man', an old man nearing the end of his life unburdens himself of the weighty family secrets that were his father's unwelcome legacy. 'Them Old Cowboy Songs' follows Archie and Rosie, a young pioneer couple, and their hardships in their attempt to homestead in the exposed wintry expanses of the prairie, and 'Testimony of the Donkey' finds a young international couple, Marc and Caitlin, struggling with much more modern concerns, and confronting uncertainty as their relationship comes to its end.

These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes–confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty - with the more benign values of the new west. These are bold, elegant and memorable pieces, and once more confirm Annie Proulx as one of the most talented, unique short story writers in the language.