Product Description

One of the sinuous and subtly crafted stories in Tobias Wolff's new collection--his first in eleven years--begins with a man biting a dog. The fact that Wolff is reversing familiar expectations is only half the point. The other half is that Wolff makes the reversal seem inevitable: the dog has attacked his protagonist's young daughter. And everywhere in The Night in Question, we are reminded that truth is deceptive, volatile, and often the last thing we want to know.

A young reporter writes an obituary only to be fired when its subject walks into his office, very much alive. A soldier in Vietnam goads his lieutenant into sending him on increasingly dangerous missions. An impecunious mother and son go window-shopping for a domesticity that is forever beyond their grasp. Seamless, ironic, dizzying in their emotional aptness, these fifteen stories deliver small, exquisite shocks that leave us feeling invigorated and intensely alive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107728 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-30
• Released on: 1997-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
Tobias Wolff has earned the deep respect of his many readers for direct, compelling stories marked by honesty and insight. The Night in Question is a collection of fifteen short works tied together by Wolff's upright style and unyielding interest in those moments when moral confusion crystallizes into clear, shining action and understanding. His characters, situations, and themes become familiar over time: children recognize the failings of their parents, men and women attempt to bridge the distance between themselves, and singular events shape everyday feelings into a new and more meaningful reality.

From Publishers Weekly
While some gifted writers make a show of their virtuosity, others, like Wolff, make what they do seem so artless that only upon reflection is the meticulous craftsmanship and intelligence of their work apparent. Wolff's first book of short fiction in over a decade (after his two acclaimed memoirs, This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army) finds him writing at the top of the form. In each of the 14 stories in this splendid collection, Wolff's tone is unadorned, and a good number of the events he describes are just this side of prosaic; yet they are graced by an unerring sense of just how much depth can be mined from even a seemingly inconsequential situation. In "Firelight," an unnamed narrator recollects looking at rental apartments with his glamorous but impoverished mother; their brief interaction with another family showing them an apartment they can't possibly afford opens up into a meditation on home, family and belonging. The book begins with the wry and surprising "Mortals," in which a journalist is fired for writing the obituary of a man who proves to be very much alive. Other strong stories include "Flyboys," about an uneasy trio of youthful friends, and "The Chain," in which a man's desire for revenge after his daughter is attacked by a dog begets a cycle of violence with unforeseen consequences. In several stories, teenage protagonists and young men serving in Vietnam suddenly experience the instinct of self preservation; they and other characters learn to test the limits of their moral certitude. Wolff's characterizations are impeccable, his ear pitch-perfect and his eye unblinking yet compassionate. 30,000 first printing.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Fiction writer and memoirist Wolff's (This Boy's Life, LJ 1/89) first story collection in more than a decade is reminiscent of his early ones. Dysfunctional families and their issue detached from any of society's intimacy struggle through mostly unfulfilling personal lives. Death hovers in the background like a smug demon. In "Mortals," a henpecked husband calls in his own obituary to a newspaper; the careless obit writer is fired when he neglects to confirm the death. Wolff's enlisted grunt is represented in "Casualty," where a smart-mouthed soldier is killed just before he is to be rotated back to the States. In "The Chain," a young girl is attacked by a dog, and her father reluctantly agrees to allow his cousin to secretly kill the dog, whose owner has not been brought to justice. Unlike his earlier work, which was somewhat raw, in this book Wolff ties up his stories with neat, little endings. His reputation as a memoirist will create demand. Recommended.
-?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Some of the best short stories you'll ever read
After Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff is usually tagged as the minor partner in the pioneers of "dirty realism", a fairly meaningless term which was used to denote a new orthodoxy of somber and minimalist fiction about blue-collar American life. Having read all three, I think Wolff is actually the better writer. His stories are richer and more complex than Carver's in terms of their characters and themes, and they're more accessible than Ford's. Those collected here are fine examples. The plots are often simple; the incidents and settings are everyday, you might even say mundane. Yet in even the smallest moments from the most ordinary lives, Wolff skillfully illuminates the larger forces that animate them: love, desire, revenge, regret, vanity, hope and gratitude. Time and again, in the space of a paragraph or even a single phrase, the story turns, escalates, opens up, reveals itself as concerned with something far more substantial than you might have sensed. You can fall through a moment of banality and find yourself in a story with the density of a planet. The economy with which Wolff manages this is sometimes breathtaking, as in "Lady's Dream" and "Bullet in the Brain" which lay bare entire lives in the space of a few pages. Every story here is excellent, but three stood out for me: "The Life of the Body", in which a civilized school teacher is unable to resist the siren songs of sex and violence; "The Other Miller", which explores the relationship between a young soldier and his estranged mother; and "The Chain", a three-act suburban tragedy with the corny arc of a Hollywood screenplay, but which still manages to be moving because at its heart there's truth. That seems to be the key to Wolff's work. It's the one thing you just keep noticing: there isn't a single climactic moment that doesn't ring true.

great collection of amazing works
Wolff is an amazing writer. He says more in these short stories than other writers say in entire books. I heard Bullet in the Brain on This American Life and I had to buy the book. I am so glad that I did. Kids will be studying these someday in school.

One of the Best Short Story Writers Ever.
I liked this collection but, don't kill me, I thought In The Garden of the North American Martyrs was better. Maybe it's my imagination or something about the timing of my reading each, but with The Night in Question I thought that at times Wolff was packing too much into his sentences, too much insight. It was all trenchant observation and inspiration, but those pockets of narrative threw the rest of the story off kilter for me and detracted from what I liked so much about In the Garden: that the stories are so simple and -- within that -- so elegantly complex. This could be my imagination; I'm not sure.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. But I second everybody who said Wolff takes ordinary occurrences and portrays them beautifully and, as the pieces come together, with so much significance. Thanks also to the person who mentioned Carver. I agree, it would have been nice to see his writing mature.

If you haven't read any of Wolff's books or are thinking of getting this book, definitely do. Buy In the Garden too.