Tobias Wolff, An American author born in Alabama State is in his 70s. Writer, memoirist and novelist, he is most famous for This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army. Tobias has written stories which takes you to small-town America where joys, struggles despair and aspirations are equally small. The landscapes where Tobias sets his stories are so familiar that you just blend in them. Tobias was working at Syracuse University as an instructor in the graduate writing programme where Jay McInerney, George Saunders, William Tester, Alice Sebold and Paul Watkins were his students.

Wolff’s first short story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, was published in 1981 the stories have reappeared in many anthologies. The collection I want to read titles as Our Story Begins which is the title of one of Wolff’s earlier short fiction published in 1985. In this collection, there are 21 of his best works and 10 new stories spanning three decades. These stories of war, morality, frustration, loneliness and love trace a path through the everyday and the extraordinary, shedding a poignant yet hopeful light on American life and the intricate truths of human nature. (From the blurb of the book)

Liesl Schillinger wrote “Tobias Wolff’s storytelling: to show that whatever someone once was to you, they remain — in some corner of the mind, in some corner of the heart, in defiance of fairness, of reason, of history, of time. The story begins and ends at the same place.” While praising his work in her review of Our Story Begins in The New York Times. I am interested in reading this book because what I have read about Wolff’s writing style. Tobias likes to put his characters at crossroads of moral dilemma where they need to make that choice. This process of choosing is the thread which binds us all.

You can grab your copy from the following link.

Amazon

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (25 March 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400044596
ISBN-13: 978-140004 4597

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