Cathedral - Raymond Carver

This poignant collection of stories from a Northwestern author are steeped in genuine experience - in failure, struggle, and common human interactions. The premises are surprisingly strange: in the title story, a man admits his uncertainty about meeting a blind man, only to find a strange sort of comfort in the new experience. But in scenarios such as this, Carver avoids both didacticism and sentimentality; his subtle, unpretentious language simply shows, with almost haunting honesty, a very real world. The characters within his barren situations are full of doubts and weakness (in 'Careful,' a man convinces himself that it's ok to drink Champange straight from the bottle in the afternoon by himself), have little aspirations, and make errors - in other words, they are very authentic. Each of these twelve short works offers a unique glimpse of both the emptiness and possibility of life.

Worth Reading
3.5 out of 5
Buy this book: Cathedral