CK’s Reviews > What We Talk About When We Talk About Love > Status Update

16/17 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: The titular story in this collection really felt like the culmination of all the ideas from the first 15 stories…meaning we don’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about love, just that we think we do and we think we don’t, and all we can really do is exist in the present moment.

15/17 Everything Stuck to Him: I would love to hear theories on whether this strangely (for this collection) optimistic story is one that really happened, or one that the narrator wishes happened

14/17 Popular Mechanics: Incredibly short but emotionally raw, emphasized in a new style so far in this collection - the missing quotation marks, making this dire moment feel surreal and terrifying yet distant.

13/17 The Calm: I like how this was framed, a story inside a story, about how men in different generations relate to one another - and how you can be intimate with a man in different ways, through softness and through violence.

12/17 A Serious Talk: more connections here about a man equating ownership of a house to ownership of a relationship

11/17 The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off: I struggled with this one admittedly, and it is the longest story so far. I felt a real Grapes of Wrath vibe from this one, and the line about the body (also the crimes done by and to it) being under the surface, and for a longer time than we thought, was brilliant.

9/17 After the Denim: These stories about looking at destructive behavior in a young couple and seeing a past version of yourself are my favorites of Carver’s, especially after reading his history. I can see the dedication for the collection shine through for this particular story.

8/17 Tell the Women We’re Going: Super dark insight into the relationships that serial killer types build with each other and with others, framed by societal expectations and twisted survival skills.

7/17 The Bath: I really appreciate how Carver has two characters who are depicted according to what role their emotions are leaning toward: parent, spouse, or person. The ambiguous ending was also painful but fitting for this type of story

6/17 Sacks: This story makes you realize that most affairs are mundane and repetitive and not that different from each other…except to the people experiencing the act and the fallout.