Annie Proulx is particularly good at two things above all. The first is the unrelenting and all pervasive bleakness of her West, a simmering brutality which extends beyond human violence into the landscape itself. In Proulx's Wyoming, things burst, break, split, punch, sour, rust, sling, hang, begrime, callous, snarl, and sicken with such frequency that it is little surprise when environmental brutality ruptures into acts of extraordinary human cruelty--not surprising, but shocking nonetheless. The Faulknerian reveal at the heart of 'People in Hell just want a drink of water'--one of the strongest stories in the collection, one which rightfully has a place in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers--manages to both burst from nowhere, and yet be totally preordained; in a world so numbed to violence and hardship, how else could such a story end? Of course, the other great talent of Proulx's is naming. Josanna Skiles? Pake Bitts? Ras Tinsley? Oakal Roy? Bewd and Leecil? I struggle to think of another writer whose ability to produce such alien and yet familiar sounds--something more guttural than a name--and which fit the characters so well could compare to Proulx.