Close Range

The inspiration behind ‘Life of Pi’ director Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is one of the short stories to be found in this haunting collection of Wyoming tales.

‘Brokeback Mountain’ is set in the beautiful, wild landscape of Wyoming where cowboys live as they have done for generations. Hard, lonely lives in unforgiving country. Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar are two ranch hands, glad to have found each other’s company where none had been expected. But companionship becomes something else on Brokeback Mountain, something not looked for – an intimacy neither can forget.

‘Brokeback Mountain’ was made into an Academy Award-winning film by Ang Lee, and starred Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.

Reviews

‘Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms’, The Wall Street Journal

‘A stunning collection of eleven tales about the hard lives of the ranchers, cowpokes and country wives who struggle to survive in an unforgiving environment. Written in a wonderfully flexible style that can be both spare and extravagant, her book has been hailed by American critics as a masterpiece.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Like a mystic seeing the transfigured universe, she recreates the beauty of ordinary things.’ Independent on Sunday

‘The detail is meticulous, the prose poetic and Proulx's fiction teems with life. Above all, her stories engage the heart. Magical.’ Tatler

‘Proulx's style, compressed, elastic, hard-hitting, is inimitable: close to poetry but never self-indulgent. This is writing to be savoured.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘These are tales we can almost feel in our bones.’ Sunday Times

‘Individually, these 11 tales have a tautness and an urgency that are never less than exhilarating. Collectively, they encapsulate an entire, unremittingly bleak world. To find the pulse of humanity in such desperate lives betokens a writer of genius.’ Saturday Telegraph

About the author

Annie Proulx published her first novel Postcards in 1991 at the age of 56. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, the acclaimed novels Accordion Crimes and That Old Ace in the Hole, and the short story collections Close Range and Bad Dirt.