Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

by Raymond Carver

With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.

"[Carver's stories] can ... be counted among the masterpieces of American Literature." --The New York Times Book Review

"One of the great short story writers of our time--of any time." --The  Philadelhpia Inquirer

"The whole collection is a knock out. Few wriers can match Raymond Carver's entiwining style and language." --The Dallas Morning News 

Reviewed by jamiereadthis on

4 of 5 stars

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Carver’s writing is superb. This is an indisputable classic. These stories are cloaked in failure and sadness, though, and this first time through, that’s the only reason I couldn’t love each one of them proportionate to their worth.

The ones I did love in proportion, the ones that really hustle and move:
- The high as a kite “What’s In Alaska?”
- Al and Suzy and Betty and Mary and Alex in “Jerry and Molly and Sam”
- The restless “Student’s Wife”
- “The Ducks” and the millworker and the millworker’s wife
- “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets.” In all its truth and untruth, and its fathers and sons, and the holy hell of this line: Now he recalled his father’s one fistfight as if it were all there was to the man.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 18 May, 2014: Finished reading
  • 18 May, 2014: Reviewed