Close Range

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, a collection of short stories inspired by the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. In a collection inspired by the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Wyoming, Annie Proulx invests these short stories with an intelligence and black humour that transforms them into something new and surprising. Inventive, compassionate and wildly funny, these marvellous stories explore the unbreakable bond between a people and their land. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain confirms Annie Proulx’s status as one of the most powerful and accomplished voices in contemporary American fiction.

‘Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms’, The Wall Street Journal ‘A stunning collection of eleven tales about the hard lives of the ranchers, cowpokes and country wives who struggle to survive in an unforgiving environment. Written in a wonderfully flexible style that can be both spare and extravagant, her book has been hailed by American critics as a masterpiece.’ Daily Telegraph ‘Like a mystic seeing the transfigured universe, she recreates the beauty of ordinary things.’ Independent on Sunday ‘The detail is meticulous, the prose poetic and Proulx's fiction teems with life. Above all, her stories engage the heart. Magical.’ Tatler ‘Proulx's style, compressed, elastic, hard-hitting, is inimitable: close to poetry but never self-indulgent. This is writing to be savoured.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘These are tales we can almost feel in our bones.’ Sunday Times ‘Individually, these 11 tales have a tautness and an urgency that are never less than exhilarating. Collectively, they encapsulate an entire, unremittingly bleak world. To find the pulse of humanity in such desperate lives betokens a writer of genius.’ Saturday Telegraph

Now writing under the name of Annie Proulx, E. Annie Proulx is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and the acclaimed Accordion Crimes. She is also the author of a previous short story collection Heart Songs.