I Felt Like House Reading This Book

I had no idea what to expect from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver. There were two major conflicting ideas in my mind: Mr. Brower gave it five stars on goodreads (!), but its title (depending on the tone in which you read it) could sound sort of sappy. But, as previously stated, Brower gave it five stars so I could safely assume it wasn't a sappy, generic romance novel. What was it then?

It was fantastic. It's a collection of short stories, which don't really seem to relate. The common thread (with the exception of only two stories) is that the stories center around disfunctional relationships between married couples. The book is, in essence, a realistic telling of marriage; it avoids the idealized view of perfect "true love." It was quite refreshing.

The thing that separates this books is the writing style: minimalism. Everything is stripped away except the most vital details. No context is given for any story, but in four pages worth of prose, you are able to infer everything relevant about each character's life. More importantly, there is no explicit conclusion to any of the stories. The book is difficult for this reason: every detail is significant, but the reader has to decide why; then, the reader has to form his own conclusion based on the evidence. I felt like reading this book was like watching a Forensic Files episode without the narrator's commentary and without seeing the last five minutes: the facts are there, you know what the answer is, but it is never explicitly stated. No explanations are given, ever, but you know what happens and why, strictly based on the selection of detail. It's unsettling, but once I got used to it, I loved solving the puzzles.