Nothing Gold Can Stay, (Paperback)

from rvhatha

A mixed bag: I almost stopped reading after part I--I found that group of stories' ambiguous endings more affected and annoying than artful and haunting. And I worried that This would prove to be Rash's formula, to end all his stories as obliquely as possible. But the structure changed in the lat...

from dickmanikowski

Frankly, I had never heard of Ron Rash until hearing an NPR interview a few weeks ago. His fiction, apparently largely centered on the hardscrabble life of the people of Appalachia, sounded interesting. And it is. To my surprise, I realized I had read one of these stories fairly recently, It must...

from hemlokgang

I was impressed with this collection of short stories. Rash writes gritty, dark, hopeful and despairing stories. Each tale is distinct from the others. The overall feeling I am left with is intensity. I was drawn to the characters and the deep emotion evoked by each story. A great collection!

from Beamis12

These stories have such a strong atmosphere of the Appalachians, which is of course whatRash is best noted for. I wasn't sure if his stories would follow the same path of his novels, his brutal honesty in his treatment of his characters and his at times rather violent twists. One has to think whe...

from maritimer

By and large these stories fit the "going from bad to worse" pattern, with something awful having just happened, or just about to. Many have that eye-rolling, freighted moment when you want to look away, feeling so viscerally that things are about to go irrevocably off the rails. There is a good ...