A Multitude Of Sins - Softcover

Richard Ford

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099445182 ISBN 13: 9780099445180

Publisher: Vintage, London, 2002

Synopsis

One of the most celebrated—and unflinching—chroniclers of modern life now explores, in this masterful collection of short stories, the grand theme of intimacy, love, and their failures. And only a storyteller of Richard Ford’s remarkable agility, insight, and candor could envision with such felicity our most fallible human efforts to achieve what we consider most important with one another: to be faithful and sincere, empathetic and patient, to be honest and passionate and finally loving toward those we care for or merely, if desperately, desire.

As in all of Ford’s work, the settings are as distinct as the Connecticut countryside is from New Orleans, or a Michigan ski resort from Grand Central Station. Yet in each he is drawn to liaisons in and out and to the sides of marriage. An illicit visit to the Grand Canyon reveals a vastness even more profound . . . An exacting career woman celebrates Christmas with her adamantly post-nuclear family . . . A couple weekending in Maine try to
recapture the ardor that has disappeared, both gradually and suddenly, from their life together . . . A boy confronts his estranged father on a hunting trip and finds a disappointment that will change him forever . . . As they drive through a spring evening, a young wife confesses to her husband the affair she had with the host of the dinner party they’re about to join.

It is within such relations, these extraordinary stories suggest, that our entire sense of right and wrong is enacted, and the rigorous intensity Richard Ford brings to these vivid, unforgettable dramas marks this as his most powerfully arresting book to date—confirming the judgment of the New York Times Book Review that “nobody now writing looks more like an American classic.”

About this title

Review

Love, and our frequent failure to meet its challenges, is the subject of Richard Ford's wonderfully insightful collection of short stories, A Multitude of Sins. The understated prose is shot through with an incisive, empathetic, and not at all cynical understanding of the psyche of Middle America, with which fans of Ford's previous novels, The Sportswriter and its Pulitzer Prize-winning sequel, Independence Day, will be familiar. These stories are inhabited by characters for whom love has become a moral maze rather than a clearly defined path towards fulfillment.

In "Reunion," a man accidentally encounters the husband of a woman with whom he had an affair, and he is forced to relive an episode of his life he would rather have forgotten. In another story, a young couple is driving to a dinner party when the wife discloses an affair that she's been having with their host. Ford seems to be more interested in examining the aftermath of their infidelities than the affairs themselves--in particular, what happens when intimacy fails to provide the anticipated satisfaction. There are no easy, moral solutions at the end of each tale, no sense of peace or wisdom that the characters can attain. Instead, they are left to contemplate the repercussions of their actions and to try to salvage some greater self-understanding from the morass. By holding up this mirror to our own lives, Ford renders A Multitude of Sins an unsettling but rewarding read. --Jane Morris, Amazon.co.uk

From the Back Cover

“One of the country’s best writers. . . . No one looks harder at contemporary American life, sees more, or expresses it with such hushed, deliberate care.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Haunting. . . . In each of these stories . . . there is something as delicate as the atmosphere in a Henry James tale. . . . There is also the spirit of something ineffable . . . a yearning for the world to be better than we expect. Chekhov and Cheever mastered such miracles from everyday dramas. Ford is among their company.” –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Wrenching, intense, overflowing with compassion, A Multitude Of Sins leads us into the restless ambiguities of the heart.” –Dan Cryer, Newsday

"Encompass[es] the comedy and pathos and wit of our dislocated times. [and] reminds us how powerful short stories can be.” —Los Angeles Times

"Scorching. . . . These stories are wry, stark, and heartbreaking–and, with the quiet moral urgency at their core, make up Ford's most stinging collection to date." –Elle

"Robust. . . .This is vigorous writing, unfolding with the leisurely confidence that is the practiced craftsman's best illusion." —The Boston Globe

"Very powerful. . . . Ford has a fine sense of place, be it southern, western, or foreign." —The New York Review of Books

"Reasserts claims that in the hands of a lesser author would appear quaintly old-fashioned: that our lives have real importance, that there is such a thing as sin, that all of our actions...have consequences. It is a testament to Ford's gifts as a writer that in A Multitude of Sins this previously well-traveled ethical terrain feels shockingly new." –The New Leader

"Elegant, pristine, precise . . . these stories are indisputable proof that Ford is a contemporary master of the short story." –Esquire

"[Ford gives] a scope to private life that puts him in company with the master realists–think of Chekhov's short fiction or the best work of F. Scott Fitzgerald." –Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage, London
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0099445182
• ISBN 13: 9780099445180
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304