“The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind is superb, tough, intense, wise, with characters meticulously rendered. I really cannot imagine a more affecting first collection.”
—Mary Robison
“David Guterson is my great hope for the future of American fiction. Here at last is an antidote for the pretense and fashionable angst in Brat Pack fiction of the 1980s.”
—Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage
“A seamless flow of language and story rewards the reader’s efforts. Well crafted and polished … these tales tender truth.”
—Seattle Weekly
“Set mostly in the clean outdoors of the Northwest, in a world in which hunting and fishing and sports are among life’s givens, the stories contrast this outward robust confidence with the inner doubts and disillusionments that are, in Guterson’s reckoning, what little boys, and big ones, too, are made of. The pieces are well-crafted, the characters taking shape with a few simple brush strokes.”
—Boston Globe
“A first collection of ten stories—stark, moody portraits of men or boys faced with loss—that are tautly written, austere, occasionally lyrical, and mark Guterson as a writer to watch.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“These are wonderful, compassionate memory pieces told with a fine sense of detail, and without a whiff of sentimentality, whose revelations unfold quietly and inevitably.”
—Booklist