Nothing But You: Love Stories from the New Yorker

By The New Yorker and New Yorker Magazine

Book Overview

Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, John Updike, Gabriel García Márquez, Mavis Gallant, Julian Barnes, Michael Chabon, Jamaica Kincaid, John O'Hara, Muriel Spark, Ann Beattie, and William Maxwell are among the contributors to Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker--assembled by Roger Angell, senior editor at The New Yorker. This is the first fiction anthology in more than three decades from the magazine that has defined the American short story for almost a century. As noteworthy for its range as for its excellence, Nothing But You features a stunning array of present and past masters writing about love in all its varieties, from the classic love story to dislocated narratives of weird modern romance. Taken separately, these stories suggest the infinite variety of the human heart. Taken together, they are a literary milestone, a comprehensive review of the way we live and love now.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375751505
• ISBN13: 9780375751509
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Modern Library
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

highly satisfying anthology

These stories are nearly all wonderful, some are brilliant, and most are unavailable in other anthologies. I picked up the volume to read "We" by Mary Grimm -- well worth the find -- and then I read the collection. Many I remembered from their appearance in the magazine, like Julian Barnes's "Experiment", a dear lost friend. Others were entirely new, like the hysterically "on" Chabon and "Sculpture 1" by Angela Patrinos. Carver's "Blackbird Pie" might be the very best of all.

Terrific overall

The New Yorker publishes great writers, and great writers are worth reading. This collection, by focusing on a single theme, shows us familiar names often writing on an unfamiliar topic (love), which is always intriguing if occasionally disappointing. The quality of the stories varies but is usually quite high.

An excellent theme, an excellent collection

This is a really excellent book and should please anyone who likes short story collections and especially fiction from The New Yorker. Although I quibbled with the inclusion of certain stories and didn't like every one, it's hard for me to imagine a much better, broader, or satisfying range of stories on love than the one displayed in this volume. The book mixes many respected and famous authors with less established, newer ones, and I honestly can't say that the stories by either set of authors are better than the others.My three favorite stories were Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic "Eyes of a Blue Dog," John Cheever's previously anthologized "Marito in Citta," and Alice Munro's recent "The Jack Randa Hotel." Each of these stories, like most of the best stories in this book, works so well because it conveys the intensity and idealism and adventure of love but is also grounded in the concrete, mundane details of everyday life. Other standouts include Alice Elliott Dark's recent but already classic "In the Gloaming," Katherine Keiny's charming, Jane Austenish "How to Give the Wrong Impression," R. Prawer Jhabvala's culture-clashing "The Man with the Dog," Bobbie Ann Mason's hilarious and moving "Love Life," John O'Hara's piercing "How Old, How Young," Raymond Carver's Edgar Allan Poe-imitating "Blackbird Pie," and Mary Grimm's probing "We."As the editor, Roger Angell, and other reviewers here have noted, the book is not all full of happy endings and is not even always about passionate love affairs per se, but the broad theme of love is the perfect motif to carry along a short fiction anthology, and this theme keeps you moving through the stories just as love in real life keeps you moving through the everyday ups and downs of being with a romantic partner. One of the best short story anthologies I've read in a while.

Well Done

The choice of stories for this compilation ran the gamut of writing styles and styles of love. My only concern was how many (maybe 2/3!) dealt with infidelity. I suppose Tolstoy had it right when he wrote: 'All happy families are alike.....'

In preparation for Valentine's...

I've been spending the past few months thinking about that "love"-thing. And this book seemed so appropriate I 1-clicked (TM) it. So far, it's been serving it's duty. The fiction is, of course, excellent: it's the New Yorker. But the take on that "love"-thing that Roger Angell has chosen to assume for the magazine is most definitely intriguing. There is quite an emphasis on the true "love" found in affairs, that marriage contains none, only some sort of "duty," that love be of the impassioned and impulsive nature that only those of a poet's constitution could afford. So, basically, it did make me feel like crap; but what a read.