Close Range - Annie Proulx - A Short Summary & Review
Close Range: Wyoming Stories - Annie Proulx - A Short Summary & Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
A short summary:
In Close Range, Annie Proulx presents a collection of short stories rooted in the unforgiving landscapes of Wyoming. These are tales of ranchers, drifters, families, and loners shaped by isolation, weather, labor, and hard choices. The land is not a backdrop; it is an active force pressing in on the lives lived upon it.
Proulx writes the West without sentimentality, revealing how beauty and brutality often coexist. The stories are spare, physical, and deeply grounded, showing how survival in wide-open spaces can both harden and define the people who remain there.
My favorite quote from the book:
Questions to ponder while reading:
My review:
Close Range is a collection I admired deeply, especially for its descriptions. Proulx captures Wyoming with an unflinching eye, wind-scoured, desolate, and achingly beautiful. The landscape feels vast and indifferent, yet strangely intimate, shaping every choice her characters make.
These are well-crafted tales, tight, unsentimental, and honest. Proulx refuses easy redemption or tidy conclusions. Her characters endure rather than overcome, and their lives are marked by restraint, silence, and survival rather than triumph.
Reading this book made me want to take a Wyoming road trip, not to escape, but to understand. Can you find solace in desolation? Can you find beauty in the stark? Close Range suggests that you can, but only if you’re willing to face the land, and yourself, without illusions.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
✨ #TakeTheBackRoads
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