What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a collection of short stories that is highly recommended by Doug Niemela (who was once a laid back musician and is now a workaholic graphic designer). He calls it "fantastic" and describes the collection as "snapshots of life in the Pacific Northwest. There’s one story in which the characters are drinking gin [the title story], and by the time you finish that story, you feel drunk." James Dickey says, "Carver’s stories have tremendous force, the power of a connecting left hook when the fist is filled with a roll of coins. Such an impact cannot be shaken off. Raymond Carver is extraordinary." Stanley Elkin says, "His rumpled men and ragged women will break your heart."
This volume contains 17 stories, stories of homeless, jobless, bewildered Americans in hysterical motion from one spoiled place to another. The door is always open because someone is always leaving—and the TV is always going because it is safer to look at television than at people.

From the story Gazebo,
    That morning she pours Teacher’s over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.
    I go, "Holly, this can’t continue. This has got to stop."
    We are sitting on the sofa in one of the upstairs suites. There were any number of vacancies to choose from. But we needed a suite, a place to move around in and be able to talk. So we’d locked up the motel office that morning and gone upstairs to a suite.
    She goes, "Duane, this is killing me."
    We are drinking Teacher’s with ice and water. We’d slept awhile between morning and afternoon. Then she was out of bed and threatening to climb out the window in her undergarments. I had to get her in a hold. We were only two floors up. But even so.

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