Close Range: Wyoming Stories

Some readers find Close Range tonally punishing story after story, the recurring cruelty toward animals and women adding up to a cast they call “mean, nasty, unlikable people” rather than earned harshness, and Pair a Spurs gets flagged by at least one reader as the flat, hard-to-stay-engaged-with entry to skip. The collection blurs together in one sitting for others, who describe catching themselves “realizing I didn't absorb any of it” and recommend one story at a time instead. Readers who saw the Brokeback Mountain film first sometimes find the story anticlimactic on the page, since the adaptation “follows the original story blow for blow” and doesn't add much they didn't already know. Proulx's prose is a dealbreaker for some who like the material but say the style itself doesn't click: “Cool ideas, but I don't gel with Proulx's style.”