Product Description

Only a storyteller of Ford's remarkable agility and seriousness could produce such a rich array of stories on the single, dramatic theme of love and intimacy. A Multitude of Sins evokes, with unflinching candor, our failures to achieve what we consider to be most important: to be faithful and sincere, empathetic and patient, to be honest and passionate and finally loving toward those we care for or merely, if desperately, desire. As in all of Ford's work, the settings are as distinct as Montreal is from New Orleans, or Maine and the Grand Canyon. Yet in each he is drawn to the relations between women and men-liaisons in and out and to the sides of marriage. It is in these relations, his extraordinary stories suggest, that our entire sense of right and wrong is enacted, and the fierce intensity he brings to these vivid, unforgettable dramas marks this as his most powerfully arresting book to date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1161827 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio Cassette

From Amazon.com
Love, and our frequent failure to meet its challenges, is the subject of Richard Ford's wonderfully insightful collection of short stories, A Multitude of Sins. The understated prose is shot through with an incisive, empathetic, and not at all cynical understanding of the psyche of Middle America, with which fans of Ford's previous novels, The Sportswriter and its Pulitzer Prize-winning sequel, Independence Day, will be familiar. These stories are inhabited by characters for whom love has become a moral maze rather than a clearly defined path towards fulfillment.

In "Reunion," a man accidentally encounters the husband of a woman with whom he had an affair, and he is forced to relive an episode of his life he would rather have forgotten. In another story, a young couple is driving to a dinner party when the wife discloses an affair that she's been having with their host. Ford seems to be more interested in examining the aftermath of their infidelities than the affairs themselves--in particular, what happens when intimacy fails to provide the anticipated satisfaction. There are no easy, moral solutions at the end of each tale, no sense of peace or wisdom that the characters can attain. Instead, they are left to contemplate the repercussions of their actions and to try to salvage some greater self-understanding from the morass. By holding up this mirror to our own lives, Ford renders A Multitude of Sins an unsettling but rewarding read. --Jane Morris, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
Tracing the blueprint of human interaction in this latest collection of nine short stories and a novella, Ford signals the master text of lust standing behind the multitude of small sins he so tersely and poignantly chronicles. To err is human, and, in Ford's worldview, little is so human as the act of cheating on a wife or husband. In "Charity," a married ex-cop turned successful toy-maker, Tom Marshall, is caught by his wife, Nancy, a lawyer, having an affair. Johnny, the narrator of "Reunion," reflecting on his affair with Beth Bolger, sums it up like this: "At any distance but the close range I saw it from, it was an ordinary adultery spirited, thrilling, and then... it became disappointing and ignoble and finally almost disastrous to those same people." The novella, "Abyss," the collection's finest entry, tells the story of Frances Bilandic, a go-getting real estate agent with an older, invalid husband, and Howard Cameron, an ex-jock real estate agent with a more privileged background. They meet at an awards dinner in Mystic, Conn., and are soon screwing each other in hotel rooms in "little nowhere Connecticut towns." When both are sent to a convention in Phoenix, they look forward to time together, but Frances discovers Howard is a selfish putz, while Howard decides Frances is a little trashy and ditzy. Their extended outing ends in real disaster when Frances decides she wants to see the Grand Canyon. Ford's execution is flawless; this story has a canonical heft to it, bearing comparison to the best of Flannery O'Connor. Its presence alone makes this collection an essential volume, and the rest of the stories hold their own alongside it. (Feb. 19)Forecast: It's been four years since Ford's last book, the story collection Women with Men, was published to mixed reviews, and Ford's fans will turn eagerly to this new, more consistently satisfying collection. Released in a first printing of 75,000, it promises to do well sales-wise as well as critically.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Another story collection from another well-loved author. Set in places as disparate as Montreal and the Grand Canyon, Ford's tales deal with the perpetually disrupted relationships between men and women. With a 13-city author tour.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

I think I expected more
I usually jump at the opportunity to hear authors read their own works, due in part to curiosity as to what they sound like, but more for the nuances and inflections only they can give to their written words. With that said, I found Mr. Ford's reading of his own short story collections to be a pretty uninspired affair.

Mr. Ford, one of our most celebrated and meticulous authors, is not blessed with a terribly strong reading voice, and he uses an odd, choppy style with numerous inopportune pauses that would indicate (if we didn't know better) unfamiliarity with the stories. I liked Richard Poe's excellend reading of Ford's masterpiece Independence Day much better. Poe breathed a lot more life into the characters.

As for the stories themselves, they were all good, and some were excellent. I really enjoyed Reunion, about a man who stumbles across the husband of a woman he had an affair with, in Grand Central Station, and feels oddly compelled to confront. Our protagonist doens't have anything particular to say to the husband of his former lover, who has slugged him in a hotel in St. Louis, he simply wanted to create an experience where before there was none. Other stories explore similar topics of marital infidelity, and the bitter aftermath of doomed affairs.

I also really liked the story of the young married couple on the way to a dinner party in their Mercedes Benz station wagon, in which the husband is floored by an admission, by his young trophy wife, that she has slept with their dinner party host. His reactions, and the stony silence that develops between them, are indicative of the strained relations between almost every couple in the collection.

My only problem with the stories, after reading about 5-6 of them, is that they are too similar to one another. Ford keeps retreading the same ground, writing about lawyers, realtors, St. Louis and the Mayfair Hotel in a cool, detached third person narrative. After awhile you forget you are reading (or listening to) fictional stories, and almost get a sense you are peeking at notes of a marriage counselor with a clinical sense of detachment. Ford doesn't seem to experiment enough, and sometimes I would get in my car, pop in a tape about unfulfilled 40-ish adulterers, and wonder whether this is the story of the couple in a Canadian hotel, the Connecticut realtors on a business trip to Phoenix, or the Grand Central protagonist reminiscing about his affair at the Mayfair. Each of the stories works well on its own, but reading them back to back you see patterns develop that frankly grow a little tiresome. Read them one or two at a time to enjoy Ford's meticulous prose, and his sharp observations about middle class malaise.

An unflinching yet compassionate study of infidelity
Richard Ford is undoubtedly one of America's finest authors. More than any other writer today, he has a special gift for creating characters with undeniable humanity. In this new collection of short stories, not his best work but excellent nonetheless, each character feels truly genuine, with human flaws and weaknesses that we all can relate to. Infidelity and its consequences is the main theme here, and Ford explores it with all the grace, subtlety, and compassion that readers have come to expect from him. The stories, for the most part, focus on everyday occurrences; Ford's work rarely relies on intriguing plot twists, but rather profound explorations of emotion and the human experience. In "Reunion," inspired by a John Cheever story, a man encounters the husband of a woman with whom he briefly had an affair, and stumbles through an awkward yet revealing conversation, set in the middle of Penn Station. In "Under the Radar," a woman admits to her husband that she had a brief affair with the host of a dinner party they are on their way to attend. In "Privacy," a man takes stock of his marriage after finding himself drawn to his neighbor, whose nude figure he views regularly from his apartment window. In each, Ford is deeply interested in the inner motivations of his characters. What makes them love? What makes them cheat? How do they justify their infidelities, both to themselves and their spouses? And how do they ultimately deal with their own guilt and the pain they have caused to those around them? Each of these questions is answered unflinchingly and unapologetically, but with the tenderness and charm for which Richard Ford's prose is well known.

Excellent Book
Richard Ford is one of my favorite authors. I was hesitant to pick up this book having loved Rock Springs so much. I wasn't sure anything could hold up to that earlier work. This book made me much more appreciative of my good wife and marriage. If a work of fiction changes your outlook on life or causes you to think about your own situations and be glad hasn't it done its job? The stuff Ford writes is important.