Our Story BeginsNew and Selected Stories

A career-spanning collection of short fiction from the author of This Boy's Life.
Tobias Wolff, like any skilled miniaturist, can find beauty and pain in the smallest detail. Our Story Begins, his career-spanning collection of short fiction, is not perfect — “Her Dog,” a story in which a canine and a human have a telepathic conversation, is one Wolff should have reconsidered — but it’s largely a smartly-selected group of rich tales about complicated women and men.

“The Rich Brother,” for example, is a story about siblings who have very little in common. Pete is wealthy, adventuresome and a bit smug; Donald is broke, withdrawn and sensitive to a fault. Over the course of a single car ride, Wolff explores his vastly different characters in a manner that makes them feel like people we know, if not quite understand.

“Sanity” is about Claire and April, a woman and her step-daughter who have embarked on a trip to the mental hospital where April’s father has been staying. The characters don’t quite connect — a fact that makes the story so compelling — but a small detour will allow each to learn something new about one another.

“Say Yes” takes place in a kitchen, as a man tries to explain to his wife why he wouldn’t have married her if she was African-American. Predictably, the conversation ends in an argument, but Wolff can find interesting details in almost any character, even when they’ve retreated in silence to separate rooms.

Wolff may be best-known as a memoirist — his book about his tough childhood, This Boy's Life, became a film starring Robert DeNiro and Leonard DiCaprio — but his stories are just as strong as his nonfiction work. A misstep or two aside, Our Story Begins is compelling work.