Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff’s gift as a storyteller is simplicity, letting the sparse beauty of a story, and its characters, speak for themselves. His latest book, Our Story Begins, features 10 new short stories and 21 of Wolff’s older (and heavily anthologized) pieces. Older works have undergone minor tinkerings. In his opening note, Wolff writes, “I have never regarded my stories as sacred texts.”

The new stories feature the same kinds of sharply drawn characters that populate Wolff’s previous writing—everyday people captured in glimpses of life perfectly distilled to a few pages. In “Her Dog,” a man takes on the duties of walking his wife’s dog after she dies, and in “Down to Bone” a man deals with his dying mother—from the business of her funeral-home arrangements to the stifling wait for her slow death. A father in “Nightingale” drops his unwilling son off at a military academy, then ends up lost on his way home when overwhelmed with doubts over his decision. In “Deep Kiss,” a man learns about the death of his first high school love, causing him to reflect on the all-consuming nature of that relationship.

Wolff has said that what draws him to the form of the short story is that it is “so inexhaustible and so elusive a form.” Elusive…and difficult. “A story has to be really efficient,” he writes. “You cannot waste anything.” As this collection proves, Wolff is no wastrel, but a master of the form.