Cathedral by Raymond Carver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Carver has been one of my favourites for many years. Widely credited for resurrecting the short story form with Short Cuts and Will you please be quiet, please? , there is something remarkable about the tightly clenched portraits of everyday desperation that form his work. I think Carver is the master of the cut-down masculine narrative- better than Hemingway, if I may dare. The subject matter is everyday, the language is basic, and there is an working-class backdrop to all of his stories. Despite this prosaic subject matter, the resulting stories have a strangely eternal quality to them. At their best, they have an eerie way of transfiguring the mundane into the mythic. Read it, or any other of his collections. They're all spectacular.



View all my reviews