WE ARE NOT IN THIS TOGETHER

by William Kittredge ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 1984

Kittredge's stories are unabashedly regional--with the West as his region. They play out different, choked-back dramas of indebtedness: an estranged father and son duck-hunting in coldest winter; a mass murderer given solace by a lonely wife; a man and a woman, lovers once, together hunting down a marauding bear while testing the sources of their joint failure; two friends swapping women and trouble. And, at his best, such as in the title story and ""The Waterfowl Tree"" (the father-and-son hunt), Kittredge gets the light and the weather and the land rises perfectly in focus, making them vivid and lonely. Still, all of the stories here slip now and then into patchy sentimentality or stilted dialogue: ""You have done me some damage, coming into my house like you have, and I have done you some damage, but maybe you have the best of it because some morning you might come to see that nobody ever did owe you any bluebirds, not ever."" Moreover, Kittredge much too often lapses into the leaden sentences of expertise that afflict much similar writing in a consciously ""manly"" vein. (""This was a mount for the silencer. The thing itself consisted of two cylinders, a small perforated core of metal tubing inside a larger section of steel pipe, the space between them packed with sound-absorbing steel wool."") So, thus swaddled by heavy layers of attitude, Kittredge's talent for description has less than an even chance to shine. But he registers as a modest, promising talent nonetheless.

Pub Date: May 30, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION