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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Last Nightby James Salter
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion–by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. These ten powerful stories portray men and women in their most intimate moments. A lover of poetry is asked by his wife to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. A book dealer is forced to face the truth about his life. And in the title story, a translator assists his wife’s suicide, even as he performs a last act of betrayal. James Salter’s assured style and emotional insight make him one of our most essential writers Review:“Splendid . . . Perfectly constructed and marvelously accurate prose portraits . . . Salter gives up the vital facts about his characters slowly, almost on a need-to-know basis. The job of telling what his people are really like is accomplished by peeling off layer after layer of their public face. It is not until the end of the story that we see the full man or woman and often the portrait is much different than what we anticipated . . . [The title story is] a masterpiece . . . Salter’s touch is always sure and his words precise. [Each story] rewards us many times over.” Newark Star-Ledger Review:“Compelling . . . Teetering marriages, collapsing relationships and other calamities of the heart drive these 10 compact, unsettling stories by respected writer Salter. The title story is especially impressive–when Walter Such and his seriously ill wife, Marit, agree that he will assist in her suicide, Marit insists that Susanna, a mutual friend, come over to keep them company in her final moments. Nothing goes as planned, however, and Walter’s double betrayal of his wife ushers in the haunting conclusion . . . Stirring stories [that are] worthy additions to a formidable body of work.” Publishers Weekly Review:“Life is a volatile mess, and no one portrays that mess better than James Salter. . . . All of the stories in Last Night are superb.” The New York Times Book Review Review:“Terrific fiction, written by an important writer . . . All of these stories share Salter’s exquisite prose, his talent for flitting gracefully between points of view, his uncanny ability to sum up a character in a single detail . . . Salter’s people are smart, witty, libidinous and romantic, likely to experience their most important personal epiphanies at dinner parties or in fashionable restaurants. And almost all of the stories revolve around relationships in one way or another: faltering marriages, missed opportunities and betrayals, past loves resurfacing in unexpected ways. More than that, each of these stories has a secret hidden beneath a seemingly innocuous veneer, a moment at which Salter reveals that everything is not as it seems, [a moment in which] the story pivots on its axis and becomes something altogether richer and more complex . . . In an ideal world, his books would leap from shelf to cash register . . . These stories should be read and savored.” Washington Post Book World Review:“Salter’s prose inspires revelations.” The New York Post Review:“One of the best, most adult collections to appear in a long while . . . The feelings of Mr. Salter’s characters are lean and instantaneous. They deliver minimalist dialog that is more Hollywood than noir . . . Tragedy, then, is not the slow burn of the unfortunate but the sudden tumble of the rich. In several stories, it is a quick, indelible dinner conversation. Even Mr. Salter’s prose works by this puncture aesthetic . . . Perhaps this is why so many writers admire Mr. Salter: because he seems to do what he does in a single sentence. But it takes an entire story to smooth out the tablecloth; only then can he stain it.” New York Sun Review:“One hesitates to use the term writer’s writer . . . But James Salter is a writer’s writer, and his latest story collection shows why. Spare, deceptively simple prose like this is hard to come by, and if you read it with a sharp mind, you’ll pick up the unexpected curveballs that leave many of Salter’s colleagues and acolytes swooning . . . Salter captures his characters in a few short scenes, but each story packs in a lifetime of real feeling. Quiet and genteel though they may be, these people are capable of wicked betrayal, and they aren’t jaded to its consequences . . . [Here] we can feel the seductive power of words.” Time Out New York Review:“James Salter is one of a handful of writers whose name is uniformly uttered in reverence by fellow writers . . . Last Night is clearly the work of a writer with the perspective of years, the long view. The stories often focus upon those pivotal moments that, in retrospect, shape a life–missed chances, wrong paths taken, that one opportunity that a character did or didn’t take . . . Mysterious and evocative, and utterly beautiful in its language . . . Salter can toss off sentences [that] stop you cold in their lyric precision seemingly at will, two or three on every page . . . What also comes through Salter’s fiction is wisdom, earned from a well-lived life.” Hartford Courant Review:“We sometimes come late to treasure we should have found long ago. For me, it is the writing of James Salter . . . Last Night has all of the trademark precision and melody he is known for . . . Elegant . . . In the Salter story, the table will be set, there will be wide doors with curved brass handles, deep armchairs, and Vuillard prints on the walls. The bed linens will be turned back and someone will be in tears . . . Salter is such a paradox to read. On the one hand, you have these pages of pliant and mellifluous prose, as fine and as sumptuous as a seven-course French dinner, hinting at life as comely as those meals. And then you have his characters in all their splendid shambles.” The Buffalo News Review:“As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know.” Reynolds Price Review:“For numerous reasons, all of which are dazzlingly illustrated in the new story collection Last Night, Salter seems to be the contemporary fiction writer whom other practitioners of the art hold in highest esteem.” –The Oregonian Review:“The ragged tumult of intimacy has long been the province of James Salter, writer of the exquisitely appropriate sentence; the excruciatingly penetrating short story; the impressionistic, incandescent novel. In A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years (arguably one of the best novels ever) and Solo Faces, he has taken the art of fiction into a realm all his own; in Burning the Days and Gods of Tin, he has made nonfiction high art. In his latest, Last Night, neither his style nor his content flags. He writes with intensity and serious intent, illuminating those places we try to hide, never letting us off the hook . . . Salter is a master at capturing that moment when matters go completely and unexpectedly awry. He then mines that moment for all its beauty, horror, poignancy, love, lust, loss, grief and confusion, and renders it in unforgettable prose.” Seattle Times Synopsis:A superbly accomplished new collection explores the acclaimed author's signature themes: love, honor, sacrifice, friendship, and abandon. In these taut, powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. About the AuthorJames Salter is the author of the novels Solo Faces, Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh (revised as Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; and the collection Dusk and Other Stories, which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Colorado and on Long Island. Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including Charles Waterton and The Emperor’s Last Island, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent book, Old Man Goya, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Blackburn lives in England and Italy. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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