Présentation de l'éditeur
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2009-- now adapted into the feature film Certain Women, starring Kristen Stewart-- award-winning writer Maile Meloy's short stories explore complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared her to readers. Don't miss her new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed.
Meloy's first return to short stories since her critically acclaimed debut,
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is an extraordinary new work from one of the most promising writers of the last decade.
Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields-and fields of victory-that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly- and reluctantly-in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire.
Knowing, sly, and bittersweet,
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It confirms Maile Meloy's singular literary talent. Her lean, controlled prose, full of insight and unexpected poignancy, is the perfect complement to her powerfully moving storytelling.
Extrait
Travis, B .
Chet Moran grew up in Logan, Montana, at a timewhen kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore. InLogan, they still did, and he had it before he was two. He recovered,but his right hip never fit in the socket, and hismother always thought he would die young.
When he was fourteen, he started riding spoiled and un-brokehorses, to prove to her that he was invincible. Theybucked and kicked and piled up on him, again and again. Hedeveloped a theory that horses didn’t kick or shy becausethey were wild; they kicked and shied because for millionsof years they’d had the instinct to move fast or be lion meat.
“You mean because they’re wild,” his father had saidwhen Chet advanced this theory.
He couldn’t explain, but he thought his father was wrong.He thought there was a difference, and that what peoplemeant when they called a thing “wild” was not what he sawin the green horses at all.
He was small and wiry, but his hip made it hard for himto scramble out from under the horses, and he broke hisright kneecap, his right foot, and his left femur before he waseighteen. His father drove him to Great Falls, where thedoctors put a steel rod in his good leg from hip to knee.From then on, he walked as though he were turning to himselfto ask a question.
His size came from his mother, who was three-quartersCheyenne; his father was Irish and bullheaded. They hadvague dreams of improvement for their sons, but no ideasabout how to achieve them. His older brother joined thearmy. Watching him board an eastbound train, handsomeand straight-limbed in his uniform, Chet wondered whyGod or fate had so favored his brother. Why had the cardsbeen so unevenly dealt?
He left home at twenty and moved up north to the highline.He got a job outside Havre feeding cows through thewinter, while the rancher’s family lived in town and the kidswere in school. Whenever the roads were clear, he rode tothe nearest neighbors’ for a game of pinochle, but mostly hewas snowed in and alone. He had plenty of food, and goodTV reception. He had some girlie magazines that he got
