Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Wells Tower · 2009
Tower's debut collection announced one of the most fully formed voices in contemporary American fiction. The title story, about Vikings in the North Atlantic (somehow), is one of the funniest and most terrifying stories written in recent decades. All nine stories show extraordinary range.
The case against
One Viking story made this collection famous, and it earns the fame. The other eight mostly follow glum, busted American men in immaculate sentences: a divorced man stocking an aquarium, brothers feuding over a moose hunt, a boy circling a stepfather. Gorgeous at the line level, hard to tell apart a month later, and the range everyone praised is closer to one note.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
