A Wooded Shore

“Thomas McGuane continues his late-career short-story renaissance with A Wooded Shore, set in a Montana rarely mythologized in westerns. Mr. McGuane’s hapless heroes are local politicians, insurance salesmen, small-town lawyers and other workaday hustlers….McGuane relates these characters’ farcical miscues (and occasional dumb-luck victories) with a shrugging sense of humor and a knack for great lines….The minor details have flair as well….These stories are endlessly good company, even when everything in them is falling apart.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“At 85, the Montana-based writer Thomas McGuane—known for antic tales of misbehaving men— has earned the right to do whatever he wants, and his latest collection, A Wooded Shore, has a delightful no-brakes spirit. Here are short, ribald stories of men on the downslope of middle age who are having affairs, or hunting for mis­tresses, or indulging in mild heroics solely to make a buck. McGuane’s mode is headlong comedy, but his sentences are well worked and musical.”
—Vogue

“In every one of these Thomas McGuane stories, something is going to be very wrong and yet probably hilarious—existential slapstick in ventriloquial voices with such precise language and restraint that his sentences will literally shine up off the page….There is no better writer than Thomas McGuane.”
—Terry McDonell, Alta

“McGuane’s gift [is] for putting a story into overdrive without skimping on concrete specifics . . . . A Wooded Shore stands with this author’s finest work.”
—David Starkey, California Review of Books

“[A] stellar collection . . . . McGuane’s ruminative protagonists are frequently preoccupied by mortality and the strange ways their lives have turned out . . . . As always, McGuane stuffs his stories with offbeat plots, as when an insurance salesman’s life changes after he rescues a cat from a burning house, and darkly funny moments, such as a character dying from a dream . . . . McGuane is one of America’s greatest living writers.”
—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*

“This slim collection from the Montana master seems like . . . a coda to his prolific career . . . . Provides plenty of bleak comedy . . . . The concluding title story is the longest and perhaps the darkest, as a river trip fraught with tension and peril reveals the dysfunction of a tycoon’s family. Flinty and sharp-edged, these stories show no sign that the octogenarian McGuane is softening up.”
—Kirkus

“Spare, engaging, and full of sardonic moments, McGuane, the author of ten novels in addition to many stories, continues to show his mastery.”
—Booklist