A Primitive Heart: Stories

Tales from the Tony Award–winning playwright: “Not only an exhibition of David Rabe’s acclaimed dramatic powers but also proof of his narrative magic” (Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate).

David Rabe, playwright of Hurlyburly and In the Boom Boom Room, brings his intense vision to the world of fiction with a short story collection of astonishing range and versatility. Whether he is writing about a marriage shadowed by the unacknowledged discord of a risky pregnancy, a group of men whose attempt to settle an account launches them toward unexpected violence, or a young journalist who believes he’s escaped his Catholic roots only to be forced again to confront them by a priest who once mentored his writing, Rabe’s strong, true voice tenders an inimitable portrait of America and offers benediction to her lost souls. A Primitive Heart confirms the mastery of a writer and establishes David Rabe as an exciting voice in fiction.

“Rabe has a way of implicating the reader—of creating a near-claustrophobic bond with his restless characters, writing so convincingly that the subtext becomes almost palpable, accruing darkly, like a storm. Okay: I’m eating my heart out. ” —Ann Beattie, PEN/Malamud Award–winner

“These are gripping stories, hard to put aside, that cut so close to primitive emotional truths that they can be painful to read … That vivid confusion—the desire to understand something more primitive than thought—makes these stories unforgettable. ” —The Seattle Times

“David Rabe demonstrates in this new collection of short stories that his talent for dialogue is just as dazzling inside a prose narrative as it is on stage. ” —The Baltimore Sun

© 2007 Grove Press (Ebook): 9780802196859

Release date

Ebook: 1 December 2007