The Night in Question: Stories

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

While some gifted writers make a show of their virtuosity, others, like Wolff, make what they do seem so artless that only upon reflection is the meticulous craftsmanship and intelligence of their work apparent. Wolff's first book of short fiction in over a decade (after his two acclaimed memoirs, This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army) finds him writing at the top of the form. In each of the 14 stories in this splendid collection, Wolff's tone is unadorned, and a good number of the events he describes are just this side of prosaic; yet they are graced by an unerring sense of just how much depth can be mined from even a seemingly inconsequential situation. In "Firelight," an unnamed narrator recollects looking at rental apartments with his glamorous but impoverished mother; their brief interaction with another family showing them an apartment they can't possibly afford opens up into a meditation on home, family and belonging. The book begins with the wry and surprising "Mortals," in which a journalist is fired for writing the obituary of a man who proves to be very much alive. Other strong stories include "Flyboys," about an uneasy trio of youthful friends, and "The Chain," in which a man's desire for revenge after his daughter is attacked by a dog begets a cycle of violence with unforeseen consequences. In several stories, teenage protagonists and young men serving in Vietnam suddenly experience the instinct of self preservation; they and other characters learn to test the limits of their moral certitude. Wolff's characterizations are impeccable, his ear pitch-perfect and his eye unblinking yet compassionate. 30,000 first printing. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Fiction writer and memoirist Wolff's (This Boy's Life, LJ 1/89) first story collection in more than a decade is reminiscent of his early ones. Dysfunctional families and their issue detached from any of society's intimacy struggle through mostly unfulfilling personal lives. Death hovers in the background like a smug demon. In "Mortals," a henpecked husband calls in his own obituary to a newspaper; the careless obit writer is fired when he neglects to confirm the death. Wolff's enlisted grunt is represented in "Casualty," where a smart-mouthed soldier is killed just before he is to be rotated back to the States. In "The Chain," a young girl is attacked by a dog, and her father reluctantly agrees to allow his cousin to secretly kill the dog, whose owner has not been brought to justice. Unlike his earlier work, which was somewhat raw, in this book Wolff ties up his stories with neat, little endings. His reputation as a memoirist will create demand. Recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/96.]Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York

Kirkus Reviews

A surprisingly uneven assemblage that, nevertheless, hits several astonishing highs.

These 14 tales in Wolff's third collection (Back in the World, 1985; In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, 1981) deal variously with combative family relationships, the sources of violence and neurosis lying just beneath suburban and quotidian surfaces, and memories of the war in Vietnam (e.g., "Casualty" and "The Other Miller") that possess and transform those who served and suffered there. Wolff is at his weakest when his stories seem too nakedly personal (as in "Powder" and "Firelight"), or when they're too clearly the products of controlling ideas—such as the unbelievable tale "A Bullet in the Brain," in which a vitriolic book-reviewer can't help heckling the bank robber who's holding him at gunpoint, and is shot to death. Forget these stories, but do not miss: "Flyboys," a portrayal of unstable teenage friendship in which Wolff brilliantly evokes the controlled emotions of a boy who resists being pulled into the orbit of a suffering family; "Mortals," a snaky, surprising piece about a composer of newspaper obituaries who's fired when he fails to check on a reported death, and undergoes a strange encounter with the man whom he had, as it were, pronounced dead; "Smorgasbord," a charming comedy involving horny prep-school students, the alluring stepmother of a dictator's son, and the process of shedding youth's romantic illusions; and especially "The Chain," which opens with a terrifyingly vivid description of a man rescuing his small daughter from a vicious dog, then slowly, deftly traces the vengeful "chain" of violent acts that result from his reluctant complicity in a plot to punish the dog's callous owners. This tale is a dazzler, plotted with really remarkable ingenuity.

Understatement, irony, and surprising juxtapositions are the key ingredients of these generally accomplished and resonant fictions—the best of which are certainly among the most accomplished being written in our time.