Rare & Endangered Species, A Novella & Stories

by Richard Bausch

A collection of short stories reflects the shadowy workings of the human heart in the business of everyday life with titles such as Aren't You Happy for Me, High-Heeled Shoe, and The Natural Effects of Divorce.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

257 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1994

About the author

An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman's Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.

Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.

He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California

Reviews

[Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toward the end of the novella that closes this collection, a character who feels like an outsider, whom everyone underestimates due to his lack of privilege and education, provides a stunningly beautiful metaphor for suicidal depression. He says he's always felt the music at a wedding binds a group of friends and strangers together for the length of the party--but sometimes, one person will wander off on the grounds, outside of hearing range of this music. Essentially, wandering out of safety at this point. They're lost to the group and can't be found until they decide to come back. He tells this to his wife to comfort her about her mother's surprise suicide, which has been hanging over the characters for a while. It turns out that her mother was such a wanderer, and had over the years willingly drifted away from people at times, in small ordinary ways, but no one affixed any attention to it until after her death.

This conclusion really got me and continues to get me. It's the lasting image I've taken away from this book, and I have a feeling I'll be turning it over in my mind for years to come. That's true talent.

[Lachelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. It was okay. All his stories were pretty depressing, human condition kinds of stories. My favorite short story of his wasn't in this book, but in another short story collection of his. The story is called "Letter to the Lady of the House". That one I highly recommend. This book, I do not.

[Jacques · Rating 4 out of 5]

didn't know a damn thing about this book or author but these were nice. simple stories and familiar, repeated narratives but still quite good. didn't reinvent the wheel, but i appreciated how the conflict was always away from the narrator - that was an interesting choice for such a short collection. good stuff!

[Deidre · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this many years ago, but I only vaguely remembered the stories. I did not write anything in my book journal then and I may not write anything now because I started to write something and just lost it all when the program froze up on me. The stories were all lonely and the characters were loosely connected. I liked that but I wonder why I can’t remember them all that well. And yet I thought the stories good. The last short story is the name of the collection. It’s about the suicide of a woman. She wakes up; makes breakfast for her husband; and later kisses him goodbye to go to lunch with her girlfriends. She has lunch with them and then checks into a motel; strips; showers; climbs into bed, clean; takes a bottle of pills; and waits to die. The rest of the story is about the anger and the despair of her husband, grown children, and friends. Such a sad and believable story.

[David Mahaffey · Rating 2 out of 5]

An empty book of stories. The writing isn't bad so I kept reading, hoping for something original, but I felt like I was reading highly polished workshop pieces. The novella at the end includes both a scene in which the narrator is high and a pregnant character who gives birth at the conclusion. For all this stereotypical denouement it remains unintentionally stagnant throughout.

[b bb bbbb bbbbbbbb · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring short stories about unpleasant people. Did not finish most of them.