Sorry for Your Trouble

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By Richard Ford

Publisher Description

A landmark new collection of stories from Richard Ford that showcases his brilliance, sensitivity, and trademark wit and candor

In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love and loss.

“Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant who recklessly tries to solace the narrator’s sorrow after his father’s death. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself,” a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death. And “Nothing to Declare” follows a man and a woman’s chance re-meeting in the New Orleans French Quarter, after twenty years, and their discovery of what’s left of love for them.

Typically rich with Ford’s emotional lucidity and lyrical precision, Sorry for Your Trouble is a memorable collection from one of our greatest writers.

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10 Reviews

3.0

Barb

Created 7 months ago

Natalie Seymour

Created over 1 year ago

“If you like to read about adults who are largely impulsive, selfish, and lacking in accountability, do I have the book for you! If locations vividly described are your thing, you will also get to read about Maine and Ireland and Louisiana and France and various other locations. And if you like (male) characters being called by their last name a lot, you will really dig this. Sorry for Your Trouble is a collection of stories in which I didn't really feel sorry for anyone. The loss experienced here extends beyond actual death, although there is some of that in here. More prevalent is the loss of intimacy, of fidelity, of marriage (SO many divorces), of relationships within the family (spouse, children), of home, of self, of years gone by. Much of the loss is self-inflicted, and so I found myself not sympathizing with these characters and keeping my distance from them. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1682786993i/34196545._SX540_.jpg "This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine. You gotta hold the frame." And while Johnny and Baby ended up not holding their respective dance spaces (wink, wink), I found that I had no problem holding mine. (Did I really just use a Dirty Dancing reference in a Richard Ford book review? You betcha.) Yet even at a distance from the characters, I couldn't resist the writing of Ford. As this was my first experience reading his work, it took me a bit to get into his rhythm, but by the third story, it was such a smooth ride that I was practically on cruise control. I believe I was on the second story when I had the thought that the writing reminded me of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse - that beautiful almost lackadaisical kind of writing about a seemingly mundane day with mundane characters and mundane dialogue and mundane thoughts. This thought was rewarded when I reached the fifth story of the collection, The Run of Yourself, and lo and behold, the main character is reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Coincidence? Even as I'm writing this, I'm unsure of what I should rate this as, so I'm going to rate each story in the collection separately. Nothing to Declare Man with wife and good job unintentionally meets former flame again a couple decades after they had whatever it was they had. There is some reminiscing done both by himself and together with the woman. This woman - who goes by different names depending on time, place, mood, wind direction - is written in a way that made me not care for her a bit. With this being my first viewing of his writing period, I was wondering if this was intentional or if Mr. Ford just had no idea how to write women. STARS: ⭐⭐ Happy Man dies. Group of friends (using this word a bit loosely) meets up, with the dead man's sometimes lover/sometimes girlfriend/woman of convenience (and her dogs) joining them. This reminded me of an extra eccentric To the Lighthouse (Part 1) where everything and nothing was happening at once and no one was particularly likeable. Reminder that some people really shouldn't drink alcohol. STARS: ⭐⭐ Displaced The first glimpse of something really good. A sixteen year old boy has lost his dad and forms a friendship (again, using the word a bit loosely) with a slightly older boy who lives across the street. This was teeming with just below the surface everything that made me feel both intrigued and uncomfortable. I was always just on the edge of understanding. Niall (the neighbor) was the first character I took any interest in and appreciated the complexity of. ...I wondered what kind of boy would I say Niall MacDermott was. We go through life with notions that we know what a person is all about. He's this way-or at least he's more this way than that. Or, he's some other way, and we know how to treat him and to what ends he'll go. With Niall you couldn't completely know what kind of boy he was. STARS: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Crossing Man is on his way to finalize his divorce. As with most of the other men in these stories, he is not particularly likeable or interesting. As a woman, I found him extra distasteful, as he seemed to have plenty of thoughts about women's bodies and their appeal (or rather lack of). We do not get to meet his soon-to-be-ex-wife, but I was cheering for her and her decision to leave him. The man converses with an American woman who is on the ferry with two of her friends, and it's largely anti-climatic...except for one tiny tear. A moment can come from nowhere and life is re-framed. Stupid. But we all know that it can. STARS: ⭐⭐ The Run of Yourself This is novella length and one of the strongest pieces. A man whose wife has died returns to Maine to vacation in a home not far from the one he frequently vacationed in with his wife. The extra length of this one paid off; it felt more developed than many of the other stories. Unlike the other stories, I didn't find any of the characters unlikeable per say; I was instead incredibly sad for the way life had turned out for them. STARS: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jimmy Green-1992 Divorced man (hey, maybe don't screw around with your colleague's young daughter, buddy) is in France and goes on a kinda sorta date with a French woman. They go to a bar in which American elections are being televised. This turns into such a shitshow that I almost felt bad for ol' Jimmy. STARS: ⭐⭐⭐ or maybe ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Leaving for Kenosha Divorced man (NOT his fault this time; she left him for Mitch) spends day with his daughter who wants to say goodbye to a friend who is moving to Kenosha, Wisconsin. While Louisiana is briefly mentioned in several other stories, this one is especially atmospheric and focuses on post hurricane ravaged Lousiana as well as race and class. As the mom of a twelve-year-old, I found the daugther's dialogue a bit extreme - from far too babyish to far too adult but never really "just right." STARS: ⭐⭐⭐ A Free Day Married woman meets up with married man several times a year to have an affair that neither one feels guilty about. I liked this gender switch to a female main character even if I didn't particularly like her or her actions. There was a detachment there that has historically been more of a male stereotype. My favorite part was her shopping for gifts for her husband and children post-coitus. STARS: ⭐⭐⭐ Second Language A couple - one of them divorced and the other a widow - gets married shortly after meeting and then shortly after being married, gets a divorce. Boy, we just love a good divorce, don't we? I really liked the way this was written even though it made me quite sad about the imbalance that can occur in relationships. And about questions that swarm about - what exactly is happiness in a marriage? Can each party be equally happy in their marriage and in their life? "I think you have to make yourself happy, not wait for someone to do it," Jonathan said. "I know," Charlotte said. "That's true. And that's what I'm doing by saying this to you. I'm trying to make myself happy. But you, too." STARS: ⭐⭐⭐ I would have loved to have emerged from this book all shiny and hopeful about life, but I instead slithered out a little damaged and bleary-eyed. But the beyond lovely writing made the wreckage (that was me) worth it. Well done, Ford (I really have that last name thing down now). 3.5 - Rounded to 4 Stars Don't bother doing the "math" on this. It never was my favorite subject anyway.”

Chad J

Created about 2 years ago

Chris Scrivener

Created over 2 years ago

“Richard Ford is the master of the short story and this collection is completely absorbing.”

don Bart

Created almost 4 years ago

“Exquisitely written stories about Southern men divorced by Irish women and transplanted in New England”

About Richard Ford

Richard Ford is the author of The Sportswriter; Independence Day, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Lay of the Land; and the New York Times bestseller Canada. His short story collections include the bestseller Let Me Be Frank With You, Sorry for Your Trouble, Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, which contain many widely anthologized stories. He lives in New Orleans with his wife Kristina Ford.