I was generally disappointed with this collection of short stories. Ford's character portrayal is excellent, but none of the stories seem to go anywhere. ( )

Richard Ford seems to have a deep connection to the human spirit. His characters convey everyday thoughts that seem unusual yet are probably commonplace. Other authors wouldn’t be as successful in describing some of the workings of the human mind through memorable fiction. I love the characters he creates, and this set of short stories is as good as his novels. At least two of these stories could pass for novellas: “The Run of Yourself” and “Second Language.” Since I appreciate character development, these were my favorites in the collection. One deals with a widower’s loneliness as he recounts the days and events leading up to his wife’s suicide, and the other makes a statement about marriage and how even a good one might not be satisfying.

Some of the themes dominating the short stories include loneliness, rebirth, and reflection. Also prevalent is a dissection of the choices we have made in life and concomitant regrets. It is incredible how he conveys indifference and ambivalence when describing the characters’ fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams. His use of language is incomparable to others. I loved the way he used the double negative in "A Free Day."
Some memorable quotes follow.

Nothing to Declare
“Good choices don’t make very good stories,” she said. “Have you noticed that?” (p. 5). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

“I couldn’t live in that city one more minute,” his father had said, meaning New Orleans. “It wasn’t your mother’s fault. There was no Irma then. We just had nothing more to say to each other, hadn’t in years. Yes, I know. So what? But. I just became . . . what’s the word . .de-fascinated. It won’t make sense to you. I hope it never does.” (p. 22). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

Happy
“ But New York was where everything that mattered began. Ireland was where it ended. Americans were intellectually constipated, couldn’t maintain a decent conversation—forget about a tune—didn’t drink enough, took everything too literally, and rarely, genuinely laughed. But it was authentic and accepting.” (pp. 26-27). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

Displaced
“No matter how patented life’s course seems when you are leading it day to day, everything could always have been much different.” (p. 46). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

“At school, they treated me like a sick person they didn’t like—when they weren’t ignoring me. I didn’t say this to my mother. It would only have discouraged her about her own life.” (p. 58). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

“With Niall you couldn’t completely know what kind of boy he was. He was good, I believed, at heart. Or mainly. He was kind, or could be kind. He knew things. But I was certain I knew things he didn’t and could see how he could be led wrong and be wrong that way all his life. “Niall will come to no good end,” my mother said a day after his letter came. Something had disappointed her. Something transient or displaced in Niall. Something had been attractive to her about him in her fragile state, and been attractive to me, in my own fragile state. But you just wouldn’t bank on what Niall was, which was the word my poor father used.” (pp. 72-73). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

Crossing
“Last night, having gone to sleep thinking of the journey today, he’d had the ridiculous sensation—not quite a dream—that the entire passage of life, years and years, is only actually lived in the last seconds before death slams the door. All life’s experience just a faulty perception. A lie, if you like. Not actual. At the end, though, to feel this way was freeing. It was his habit to imagine many things as freeing.” (p. 78). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

The Run of Yourself
Man, a lawyer, grieving his wife’s suicide in a small Maine rental in the beach
Encounter with his daughter, then a real estate agent and then a very young woman he meets at a bar
Loneliness
Rebirth
Reflection

Leaving for Kenosha
Tempting to ask one of the red-smocked associates, a person of color, if she’d be offended by a well-meaning white child giving her child a friendship card in which the humans depicted were more or less “black.” Would it be insensitive? One more thing white people didn’t get in the advancing cavalcade. It was exhausting. (p. 173). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

A Free Day
“You simply couldn’t not try, though—not try to save the day at whatever expense of one’s dignity.” (p. 199). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

“Solo on the bus, the same. But again, you couldn’t not. It was such a small thing. Whereas to live (and die) on others’ terms was giving life away cheap. She wouldn’t do that.” (p. 191). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

Second Language
“Life was that and only that. A surface. That was what you could rely on it to be. (pp. 209-210). Ecco. Kindle Edition.

See my reviews athttps://quipsandquotes.net/ ( )

This is a recent (2020) collection of longish short stories by Ford, best known, perhaps, as the author of [The Sportswriter] (and three other novels about that book's protagonist, Frank Bascombe). These stories are mostly about relatively successful people who are at or post middle age. In one way or another, the characters here are all navigating the dimming of expectations that that time of life can engender. Marriages are either over or have become everyday and humdrum. Ford, as I think is usual for him, spends a lot of time describing his characters' histories and states of mind. This might all sound tedious, and in some of the stories (the book's final tale, "Second Language," in particular) it is. But in the book's better entries, Ford still displays an ability to put his characters into relatable situations, and give them enough self-awareness of their own foibles to create sympathy in the reader. He also generally avoids marching the storylines to predictable endings. I guess Ford's writing style is not necessarily for everyone. I found most of these tales enjoyable and gave the whole schmear 3 1/2 stars. ( )

I received an advance copy of this short story collection from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I place Richard Ford’s short stories in a top shelf group of very good short story writers with a distinctive American voice. I think of him in a group that contains John Cheever and Raymond Carver, each to his time. Each of these writers focused on the everyday person and how he lives and thinks about his life. Stripping the conventions and rosy suburban glow and getting to the reality underneath.

Several of the stories in Sorry for your Trouble deal with the overlap of the past and the present—with characters who wonder where to proceed into the future. Most are transitional stories. In “Nothing to Declare” a man encounters a woman from his past. She was very significant to him back then but they, well at least he, have moved on. She seems unmoored while he is grounded in family and career. While reading this I felt that this situation probably happens on a fairly regular basis. I was left with a feeling that Ford was true to the characters and that the story was realistic, if a bit sad.

Most of the stories in this collection are sad.

Several stories deal with transitions in the form of divorce or death. My favorites were “The Run of Yourself” in which a widower attempts to move on after his wife commits suicide while being drawn to the same old places; and my favorite of the whole collection “Second Language” where the protagonist deals with both death and divorce and really never gets over either one. Like many people, he never gets good answers for the “why” questions in his life.

These stories have little action and focus instead on diving deep into the characters, their individual perspective on shifting relationships and major life events. The people in these stories come from everyday life and are quite realistic in thought and action. For me, reading Ford’s short stories lets you shed your skin and enter a different person and have no sense of it being just a short story.

He is a wonderful writer.
5 stars. ( )

It was such a joy to read what Richard Ford can do with his characters in these short stories from his most recent collection, Sorry for Your Trouble. The mix of the big events and everyday things that happen between his characters is beautifully captured in these stories. It is so rewarding when you pick up a book by one of your all-time favorite writers and they show you all over again why you love their writing. Everybody knows about the ups and downs in their own relationships with people, but reading Ford’s story allows one to step back and see how his characters experience many of the same tensions, the ones that slam people around as they simply attempt to live around each other. And yet the tenderness that he captures in his writing is stunning. It also has to do battle with the pettiness that often fills many people’s lives. He’s a master.

“The Run of Yourself” is a brilliant story of a widower from New Orleans, Peter Boyce, who travels to Maine to rent a cabin near a beach. Peter is not looking to have an idyllic vacation, as he’s rented the cabin right next door to where his wife committed suicide two years previously. His late wife Mae had had cancer and had saved up her medications and sent him off to get some melons at a fruit stand, while she took her deadly dose. [I find myself thinking about her whenever I see melons nowadays.]

The couple had regularly come to that other cabin every August. At first his mind runs wild with all the reminders of Mae and their time around these cabins. Then the story heads in several new directions, as he considers buying a cabin, his estranged daughter Polly shows up for a brief visit, and then he meets a young girl in need of help. Polly’s anger over her mother’s death and Peter’s actions leads Peter to say the following to her. “I’m just learning to get along, darling. Like you are. It’s only been two years.” Before I lost my wife Vicky, I would have read that comment about the two years, and thought that this guy just needs to move on. Now that I know the intensity and the emptiness of such a loss, two years, and time in general, have taken on an entirely different scale. This story of a cabin has lodged in my head. It also contained this telling line. “He simply realized that being a widower was not, in spite of what others thought, the same as being single.”

The last story, “Second Language,” was a beautifully tragic piece of work. A woman’s husband never returns from a far-ranging solo sailing trip, and another man witnesses the following at his kitchen table. “[Mary Linn] sat down with a cup of tea, looked across the table at Johnny, smiled curiously and remarked that she’d probably feel better if she would just lay her head on her folded hands a moment, which she did. And died before Johnny could reach to touch her. She had cancer … Dying was likely the only real symptom she’d experienced.” The two survivors eventually meet and decide a second marriage is called for after just three months. Yet, in the end, it doesn’t work out and they seem better off being friends. The writing is so subtle and tender. At another point in the story, it was as if Ford was writing a scene that Vicky and I had lived out while looking at a blissful blue screen before a movie started at a funky movie theater in Sacramento.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?
Charlotte smiled in the shadows. “Oh, nothing. There’s usually not much going on in my head, Johnny. Sometimes I just have a feeling and let myself completely feel it. Don’t you do that?”

One more quote that could easily fit in many of Ford’s stories, was from a story titled “Crossing.” “A moment can come from nowhere and life is re-framed. Stupid. But we all know that it can.”

So, on a warm northern California day, this was a voice from my reading past, the words of Richard Ford were impressive in the breeze of the backyard. It was all about his characters living segments of their lives, Mr. Guinness in a cool bottle with condensation running down it, and me reading these excellent stories and thinking about life. I brought little to the table; I was just an appreciative reader. Normally I just start with the first story and cruise through a collection in order, but I jumped in here, went to there, and came back around to another. I chose by the initial impression of a story’s first few lines. I did finish with the last story last, and it slayed me. Yep, put dying spouses, divorces, and second marriages in a story and I’m definitely interested. The collection has gotten some mixed reviews, and granted a few of the stories are somewhat weaker, but when he impressed me, he wowed me with his best. ( )