Or, the Ireland collection. Having not read anything else by Ford, perhaps inserting Ireland into his work is a recurring theme throughout his career. If not, its certainly one in this collection. The stories are all about characters that could be Richard Ford but aren’t. They could be the same person, but they’re not. Many are attorneys, or attorney adjacent. Most have a strong bent for literary fiction. Or some other attraction to the liberal arts. You feel constantly as if you’re reading flashcards, all out of sorts and out of order, but all from the same deck, one of middle age becoming something else, a life well lived, but possibly not, and now being heavily reflected on. Shades of Carver, Shades of Cheever. Shades of Welty in Optimist’s Daughter, though subtle; and yet you can imagine that same Richard Fordish character - threaded throughout the collection, always having a daughter, who’s sometimes a child, more often grown, sometimes present, more often just off stage, a mere mention - as a response to Laurel Hand. She’s given a novella to rant against her father the attorney and judge, and now the father has a collection with which to respond, or at least to apologize and say ‘Sorry for your trouble.’

I first read Richard Ford in high school, when I encountered "The Sportswriter" shortly after it was published. I was hooked, and I've been a fan of his work ever since.

But as much as I love his novels, I've always been particularly drawn to his short fiction. His collections have been something of a mixed bag for me over the years, but there are always some truly memorable gems in every new collection. So, I'm always excited when a new Ford story collection comes along. "Sorry for Your Trouble" didn't disappoint.

I think this is his best book of stories since "Rock Springs," his very first collection. With the passage of almost 45 years between the two collections, they feel like fitting bookends to his short-fiction career in some ways. "Rock Springs" was raw, urgent, and so fresh. "Sorry for Your Trouble" is nuanced and mature. The shift in topic and tone over the years feels very much like the way the Bascombe series of novels evolved as Frank aged and changed.

"Sorry for Your Trouble" is full of sadness, reminiscence, and acceptance of what life throws at us. He's constantly mining our memories and the passage of time. Ford's characters definitely don't have all the answers, but there's a wisdom there all the same, which builds from one story to the next. And, always, there is Ford's trademark wit and sly sense of humor. His prose sparkles here -- as much as ever.

Particular favorites: “Displaced,” “Nothing to Declare,” and "Leaving for Kenosha."

It's a terrific collection, and it was a joy to read. I've lived my entire adult life reading Ford's fiction -- and I don't want to stop any time soon. . . .

I don't usually care for reading short stories, but the story telling Richard Ford does in Sorry For Your Trouble was phenomenal. A bit gothic in tone, but I love dark writing. If you're fans of Micheal Farris Smith or Dean Koontz, you'll want to read this book!

I’ve been intrigued by Richard Ford’s books for years but his new story collection, “Sorry for Your Trouble,” was the first I’d actually read. It definitely won’t be the last, because Ford’s writing is so clean and simple, yet he manages to create characters that are so authentic and real that I tore through this collection in two days. Seven of the nine stories are told from a man’s perspective—mostly divorced or widowed men struggling to find meaning in their middle lives. (One is told completely from a woman’s perspective, and the last is from the points of view of a man and a woman navigating a new relationship that is the second for both.) I think this is what put me off Ford for so long—the feeling that he was writing about men for men. But I connected immediately with each of the characters in these stories because Ford has such an ear for internal dialogue, and for piercingly portraying the doubts and fears that we all have regardless of gender. Standout stories for me were “The Run of Yourself,” in which a recently widowed man returns alone to the same Maine town that he and his wife spent their summers in for years, and “Second Language,” the story of how a wealthy widower falls for and marries a beautiful but self-absorbed real estate agent and of how their marriage unfolds over the ensuing years. These two stories, particularly, are long enough for Ford to really explore his characters’ complexities through their inner monologues; I thought they were brilliant. “Sorry for Your Trouble” is a collection that I will be recommending and giving as a gift for years to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco/HarperCollins publishers for providing me with an ARC of the title in return for my honest review.

I became acquainted with Richard Ford’s novels in the outstanding Frank Bascombe series (“The Sportswriter,” “Independence Day,” “The Lay of the Land,” and “Let Me Be Frank With You”.) Because I’ve liked his novels so much, I’m not sure why I haven’t read any of his short stories until the recently published “Sorry For Your Trouble.” As with his novels, many of the characters in this story collection are damaged, lonely people trying to come to some understanding of how their lives turned out the way they did.

“No matter how patented life’s course seems when you are leading it day to day, everything could always have been much different.”

The stories are elegiac and delve deeply into the character’s thoughts. Ford continues to excel at writing very realistic dialogue and presenting profound and thought-provoking ideas in a new light. While current events may make readers hesitant to read this somber, poignant collection, I would encourage them to dip into the stories whenever they are ready to take a deep dive into the mysteries and missteps inherent in the human condition.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 6/22/20.

Richard Ford is superb. I mean, the man can write, can tell a story. This collection is one big bag of woe -- not whoa! What I mean is the stories, as advertised, fair warning, are sadder than a sackful of Trump cabinet resumes. So, Mr. Ford, in lieu of sticking my head into this literary oven, I will turn to something a little more cheerful for the time being. I shall return, sir. All props to you!

I received an advance copy of this short story collection from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I place Richard Ford’s short stories in a top shelf group of very good short story writers with a distinctive American voice. I think of him in a group that contains John Cheever and Raymond Carver, each to his time. Each of these writers focused on the everyday person and how he lives and thinks about his life. Stripping the conventions and rosy suburban glow and getting to the reality underneath.

Several of the stories in Sorry for your Trouble deal with the overlap of the past and the present—with characters who wonder where to proceed into the future. Most are transitional stories. In “Nothing to Declare” a man encounters a woman from his past. She was very significant to him back then but they, well at least he, have moved on. She seems unmoored while he is grounded in family and career. While reading this I felt that this situation probably happens on a fairly regular basis. I was left with a feeling that Ford was true to the characters and that the story was realistic, if a bit sad.

Most of the stories in this collection are sad.

Several stories deal with transitions in the form of divorce or death. My favorites were “The Run of Yourself” in which a widower attempts to move on after his wife commits suicide while being drawn to the same old places; and my favorite of the whole collection “Second Language” where the protagonist deals with both death and divorce and really never gets over either one. Like many people, he never gets good answers for the “why” questions in his life.

These stories have little action and focus instead on diving deep into the characters, their individual perspective on shifting relationships and major life events. The people in these stories come from everyday life and are quite realistic in thought and action. For me, reading Ford’s short stories lets you shed your skin and enter a different person and have no sense of it being just a short story.

He is a wonderful writer.
5 stars.

"Sorry for Your Trouble" is vintage Ford: evocative, smooth, pensive and melancholy yet wry. As in his previous work, he's a master of setting, letting geographic details inform and shape his characters. There's not a weak story in the collection.

SORRY FOR YOUR TROUBLE is a lovely collection of short stories. Ford's writing is assured and comfortable; his characters are relatable and approachable. Their dilemmas are commonplace but intriguing. If I have one complaint it's that the stories are laced with a certain melancholic bitterness that feels tiresome after a while. But if you're in the mood for serious literary fiction you can pick up any story in this collection and be rewarded with a thoughtful narrative.

Published by HarperCollins/Ecco on May 12, 2020

Sorry for Your Trouble collects stories of loss, usually caused by death or divorce. Many of the characters have ties to Louisiana or Ireland, although Maine and Paris seem to be their preferred vacation destinations. They have generally reached (or at least are approaching) an age that permits sober reflection on mistakes made and reckonings to come.

My favorite entry in this nine-story collection, “Second Language,” is one of the longer ones. After his wife’s sudden death evicts him from his “infallible, magical, irreplaceable world,” a businessman moves from Idaho to New York and meets a divorced woman who feels her life is “composed of some strange, insubstantial paper that she couldn’t quite keep hold of.” They marry, but he depended on his first wife to invent the “workable, reliable mind-set” that made him feel married, and is disappointed that his second wife has a more independent view of partnership. His new wife, on the other hand, understands that her husband “believed in greater and greater closeness, of shared complications, of difficult-to-overcome frictions leading to even greater depths of intimacy and knowledge of each other,” while she simply isn’t that kind of person. Ford dissects the lives and philosophies of the two principal characters, their relationship and its aftermath, exposing hidden barriers to the kind of understanding (of life, ourselves, other people) that we expect or hope to achieve.

I also give high marks to “The Run of Yourself.” After the death of Peter Boyce’s Irish wife, Peter rents a summer house in Maine near the one he and his wife used to rent. He rents a different house — not the one in which his wife died — so he can revisit pleasant memories without being haunted by thoughts of the crusty person his wife became after she fell ill. A visit from his daughter only underscores the distance between them. He has come to realize that he only needs to make small adjustments in his life because, at his age, there is “nothing further to learn or imagine or re-invent.” Doing a favor for a troubled young woman might change his mind about that.

With two exceptions, I enjoyed all of the remaining stories, although to a slightly lesser extent. In “Nothing to Declare,” a relatively young Sandy “nonchalantly loved” Barbara when they traveled to Iceland together, but the emotion was fading by the time he left her there. “She was, he felt, pretentious and self-infatuated. Leaving was a fine idea. What he’d been missing was miss-able. In the stark light her face bore a coarseness he hadn’t noticed, but supposed he would come to dislike.” A couple of decades later, when Sandy kisses Barbara in New Orleans during a chance encounter, Sandy’s feelings are ambiguous, but it isn’t clear that either Sandy or Barbara have fundamentally changed.

The transplanted Irishman in “Happy” dies after living an intellectual’s life. Bobbi “Happy” Kamper, his “surviving paramour,” joins friends for end-of-summer cocktails in Maine, a gathering that represents “a reversion to some way of being that pre-dated everything that life had sadly become.”

In “Displaced,” a 16-year-old boy who lost his father hopes to bond with an older Irish boy, but the friendship only increases his confusion about life. A divorcing American in “Crossing” who encounters brash American tourists in Ireland before he visits with his solicitor wonders whether he would be pathetic if he were to let a tear leak out in remembrance of the past.

In “Jimmy Green — 1992,” the disgraced former mayor of a small Louisiana town winds up in Paris for no particular reason. He watches the results of the American election in an American bar with a French woman and, because of his slight preference for the winning candidate, learns that Americans abroad can be even more obnoxious than Americans at home. The unpleasant episode is easily written off as an inevitable advance in the disassembling of his life.

“Leaving for Kenosha” struck me as a story of less substance. The friend of the daughter of a divorced man is moving to Kenosha with her family. The divorced man has “a feeling of impendment” as he thinks about his daughter one day growing up and moving away. “A Free Day,” the story I liked the least, briefly follows a woman who is having an affair of convenience.

Ford has achieved a perfection of style, a fluid and harmonious voice that few writers manage with such consistency. His characters have a fundamental decency that allows them to grieve their losses without anger. They are civilized if a bit too restrained for their own good. They aren’t the kind of people who make headlines, for reasons good or bad, but they remind the reader that people who are capable of using their intellect are always striving for a balance of intellect and emotional awareness that is incredibly difficult to achieve.

RECOMMENDED

This book of short stories packs a punch. It is the stories of the middle-aged, widowed or divorced, who are trying to figure out who they are and put the pieces back together. You can open the book anywhere and find a surprise you did not expect. I have heard Ford compared to Ralph Waldo Emerson in his style of writing. And it is true. Choose to read these stories at a time when you are not rushed, that you can sip your cup of tea and ponder what you just read.

Richard Ford has always been a reliable source of elegant, thoughtful fiction. SORRY FOR YOUR TROUBLE, his new short story collection, only extends that level of literary quality into the middle of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s eighth decade. Every one of the nine stories here reveals the steady hand of a master of the form, practicing his craft with confidence and grace.

Link to my review at Bookreporter below.

Every book Richard Ford has written is amazing. I never get tired of reading and RE-reading his novels.

"We were transients. We were sheltered and stubborn in our view of life. But had we been able to stand outside of our circumstances we’d have known who we were and had become. Such changes are not easy to evaluate when they’re occurring."

This was my first Richard Ford collection. There are a collection of nine stories in this book, two of which are novella-sized. The stories take place in Maine, New Orleans, and Ireland. Richard Ford's characters are real, his writing is beautiful and his words are crafted in such a way that makes you stop in your tracks and makes you want to slow down and savor every word.

The characters in this novel aren't an enviable lot. There's so much apathy on the surface of these stories. So many different situations that would easily be full of melodrama in other novels but here they are quiet, almost uncaring in the midst of so much tension.

I am not usually a fan of short stories, I have a hard time getting attached to the characters in so many words. And yet, so many of these characters have stayed with me. But, of course, none of them can compete with the exquisite language in this book.

With gratitude to netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Due to the fact that I broke my arm and shoulder I am not capable of writing a decent review. I did enjoy the novel and I thank that Galli and the publisher for allowing me to read it. I am using voice to text please forgive the errors. Thank you

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for my electronic ARC.

A collection of short stories that explore memory, loss, and love.

What I Didn’t Like:
-It can be very slow.
-Short, choppy sentences. I don’t mind this occasionally, but it seemed all the short stories suffered from the same thing which made them all feel the same pace.
-Many of the characters from the different stories have the same voice and the same vibe. This made me wonder if they all belonged to the same tale or were somehow connected. I kept waiting for that connection to manifest.

What I Did Like:
-The quiet beauty of the “normal” and mundane. Basically each story in this collection is an average person on an average day doing average things. It’s not their most interesting day. Sometimes they’re not even the most interesting person in the story. The message seems to be even on days like that, your story is worth telling.
-Beautiful language and descriptions.
-The stories are tied together by an overall sense of loss, which was the point. That emotion comes through strongly.

Who Should Read This One:
-Contemporary fans who like their stories to be about normal lives and normal people.
-Short story fans who don’t mind short snapshots of a life.

My Rating: 3 Stars. Not everyone will love this book, but those who fall into the right niche will love it.

You can’t go wrong with Richard Ford. The collection of stories contained in Sorry for Your Troubles is sublime. If you are already a fane you will be an ever bigger one and if you are not be prepared to become one.

This was a nice, quiet collection of short stories about, above all things, reflecting on one's life and situation. The book of stories takes us from Louisiana, to Maine, to Chicago, to New York, to Ireland, and all felt very atmospheric and contemplative. Many of the stories weren't particularly happy, but, then again, I suppose life in general is not exactly happy on the whole. There are bumps and hitches along the way, and that is true of this collection as well. I think the overall feel was a bit sad, and left me a bit thoughtful about life in general and the paths it takes, and where that end of the road might be.

I love Richard Ford. He’s one of my favorite authors. These stories are good and not great. They don’t live up to the early works. But they are still superior to just about any other short story collection.

I "friended" Richard Ford in 1986 when he introduced Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter . Frank is a character you may love or hate but who gets under your skin so that each new book must be read. His short story collection Women With Men in 1997 led to comparison with Philip Roth, a writer you may love or hate, but, like Ford, is best approached with an open mind. Both men are open and raw in portraying the man woman conundrum and are dismissed by some readers for that. Sorry for Your Trouble is a mature Ford - he's 76 now, almost exactly a year older than me. The world and that ever present conundrum have evolved with some surprising results, But Ford's stories have the depth of thought and feeling that are won from long life. I've been savoring a story at a time while reading longer fiction.