What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

By: Raymond Carver

Narrated by: Norman Dietz

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.

©1981 Raymond Carver (P)2017 Tantor

Classic shorts

These are my most favorite short stories to listen to again and again. Carver is a brilliant and talented writer.

This book really captures the nuances of love.

The stories and conversations are beautiful examples of love, lust, and loss. I enjoyed listening to them, and everyone can relate to at least once of them!

Fair writing, poor reading

Just not great overall, the writing is only fair, occasionally engaging, mostly just brutal. The reading is flat and boring.

My God These Are Depressing

The performance was fine and these are good examples of literature of their time. But they are almost all just drenched in despair. Apparently love is inconsiderate and dead end and consistently disappointing. No wonder the divorce rate was so high in the 70s.

Bleak but unflinchingly honest.

Testimonial-like tales of murder, failed love, & alcoholism.
This collection contains one of Carver's best stories, So Much Water So Close To Home.
I found I prefer reading Carver to listening to Dietz's reading. Though Dietz excels at novels with a rural feel, and Carver's stories have fishermen, hunters, and the like, there's more bitterness and despair in the writing than comes across in Dietz's vocal performance.