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Close Range: Wyoming Stories Audiobook
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(3.01) - 7,091 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short story collections of our time.
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below," a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home. In "Brokeback Mountain," the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world's violent intolerance.
These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, 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.
Stories in Close Range have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and GQ. They have been selected for the O. Henry Stories 1998 and The Best American Short Stories of the Century and have won the National Magazine Award for Fiction. This is work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.
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"Can't argue that Annie Proulx writes some amazing lines that make you stop to guffaw. But don't always like the grit that gets caught in my teeth as I read. Can't swallow all the rapes and the cruelty of the characters. Guess I just don't want to believe that people can be so bad. Only "Brokeback Mountain" offered up some likeable characters. Still, my favorite, gritty, grotesque story had to be the first one: "The Half-Skinned Steer.""
— Nicola (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“As she rips away our romantic notions of the West, Proulx asks how capable any of us are of outrunning our origins. Her fatalistic answer, in these stories, adds up to some breathtaking reading.”
— People -
“Powerful…Read [the stories] for their absolute authenticity and their language, a wry poetry of loneliness and pain.”
— New York Times -
“Geography, splendid and terrible, is a tutelary deity to the characters in Close Range. Their lives are futile uphill struggles conducted as a downhill, out-of-control tearaway. Proulx writes of them in a prose that is violent and impacted and mastered just at the point where, having gone all the way to the edge, it is about to go over.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Few writers feel equally at home in the novel and the short story… [these stories] are tough as flint and on occasion breathtaking; together they stand with Proulx’s best work.”
— Boston Globe -
“The Western meets its realist due. Proulx’s Wyoming stories feature the types of characters that on the surface appear to be Western heroes but, upon deeper inspection, turn out to be thwarted and scarred human beings, most with few prospects. The highlight of this collection is the long story (turned film) “Brokeback Mountain,” which tells the story of two hard-riding cowboys and the love they keep hidden until it is too late.”
— Publishers Weekly
Awards
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A 2000 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Fiction
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Winner of the 2000 Ambassador Book Award for Fiction
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A 2000 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Fiction
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Winner of the 2000 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction
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A Publishers Weekly Pick of Top 10 Books on the History and Future of the Western
Close Range Listener Reviews
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" First two stories, "The Half-Skinned Steer," and "The Mud Below" are among the finest stories I've read since TC Boyle's _Tooth & Claw_ collection. Never thought much of Proulx (_The Shipping News_) before, but these are gorgeous. "
— Dianne, 2/12/2014 -
" Short stories including Brokeback Mountain. "
— Joseph, 1/30/2014 -
" This was wonderful. While I was struck by the blatant sexuality,no was overwhelmed by the blunt beauty in this writing. I did find some of the stories to be too long for what they were, but they were all beautifully written. It completely changed my perspective on "Brokeback Mountain" as well! "
— Sarah, 1/27/2014 -
" there's nothing i can say here that hasn't been said about proulx, except maybe that even though i've never smelled decaying grasshopper bodies, after reading proulx, i want to. "
— Jack, 1/18/2014 -
" So far I have only read a couple of her short stories, but Brokeback Mountain being one of them. Proulx puts together a great short story. "
— K., 1/17/2014 -
" Evocative to the n-th. Read this. "
— Nathan, 10/3/2013 -
" One of my favorite authors. I love her descriptions of things and am never bored. "
— Judith, 8/12/2013 -
" Love this woman's pithy writing "
— Jacqui, 6/13/2013 -
" The Brokeback Mountain short story made me cry! "
— Bianca, 5/17/2013 -
" great author. i enjoy all of her works. "
— Pat, 4/23/2013 -
" Bad ass wyoming with painfully beautiful soulful allusion. "
— Lainie, 12/9/2012 -
" brokeback mountain was the best story out of the book the others I just found weird and depressing about the the lives of red neck ranchers in Wyoming "
— Lloyd, 11/20/2012 -
" This is Proulx's best territory - wry, unromantic tales which capture human oddity with unfailing precision "
— Cath, 8/16/2012 -
" Everybody raves about how great this is. Maybe if you want bleak and depressing. "You froze to death, the joke's on you! Ha, ha, ha!" "
— Franklin, 8/3/2012 -
" Anne Proulx is a wonderful writer with great sentence structure and the ability to draw you in to the characters. This is the book that the movie Brokeback Mountain came from. I recommend any book by her. "
— Dale, 5/3/2012 -
" All of the stories in this collection are good, her writing exceptional, and some of the stories are in the stratosphere like "Brokeback Mountain" and "Half-Skinned Steer". "
— kabukigal, 12/18/2011 -
" Proulx has the ability to make the edges stand out of even the most benign scenes "
— Shane, 10/13/2011 -
" I'm kind of on a Annie Proulx kick. I like all of her books, but the short stories are my favorites. She captures an emptiness in her characters and landscape that is hard to put into words. Hell, I don't think the last sentence I wrote even made sense... "
— Clare, 8/1/2011 -
" I had this book on my shelf during my whole first year of law school. Worth the wait! Annie's stories are dark and dense, but full of beautiful flourishes. Just love her. And her take on wild Wyoming. "
— Alisa, 6/25/2011 -
" Wonderful....A must read for fans of "Annie Proulx"... "
— J., 6/13/2011 -
" Book of short stories. I had to return the audiobook to the library but will finish this book in written format some day. Leaving at currently-reading status. "
— pattie, 6/12/2011 -
" She does some great craft things with writing, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading this. "
— Michelle, 6/1/2011 -
" Gritty and unforgiving series of stories. Great descriptions of peoples lives competing with themselves and the Wyoming landscape and weather. "
— Jerry, 5/16/2011 -
" Didn't care for this one so much. Too grim. I either love her books completely, or no. "
— Lee, 5/10/2011 -
" One of my favorite authors. I love her descriptions of things and am never bored. "
— Judith, 5/6/2011 -
" I just made time to read Brokeback Mountain which was lovely in its sadness. "
— Patricia, 4/23/2011 -
" This is Proulx's best territory - wry, unromantic tales which capture human oddity with unfailing precision "
— Cath, 3/21/2011 -
" It seems a bit incongruous for me to love this woman like I do, proud vegetarian that I am, but the carnivorous devil herself couldn't write better prose than Ms. Annie "Wyoming Gothic" Proulx. She throws me for a loop and catches me in the air every time. "
— Daniel, 3/16/2011 -
" I checked this book out to read during a work-trip to Cody. I've never read Proulx before, and I am stunned at the poetry with which she can describe the 'distance and weather' of Wyoming. "
— Tara, 3/15/2011 -
" I love Woyming and its people "
— Christof, 3/14/2011 -
" I knew about the Brokeback mt story long before it came out as a movie. "
— Ron, 3/10/2011 -
" Not what I was expecting! A bit of Louie L'amour meets Edgar Allen Poe with the short story of Brokeback Mountain for the coup-de-gras... "
— Shelley, 3/1/2011 -
" checked this out from the library so i could read the short story "Brokeback Mountain"..but enjoying the other stories as well. "
— Jason, 2/28/2011
About Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx is the author of eight books, including the novel The Shipping News and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short story “Brokeback Mountain,” which originally appeared in the New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award–winning film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Proulx currently lives in Wyoming.
About Frances Fisher
Campbell Scott has, in addition to his numerous stage and film credits, narrated more than forty audiobooks, including This Boy’s Life and Into Thin Air, and won seven AudioFile Earphones Awards.