Rating: 
Summary: Depressing and thought-provoking, but a good read
Review: A Multitude of Sins is a very interesting, somewhat depressing set of stories. Every one of them deals with adultery in one form or another. Sometimes a past adultery informs the plot of the story, sometimes the ending of it is the driving force. ... though, none of the stories actually deals with the beginning of it, except in flashback. Many times, the parties involved think back to the beginning and try to figure out what has gone wrong, and why a thrilling, secretive experience has become dull and boring. The highlight of the novel has to be Abyss, the last story in the book. It's the longest story, and allows Ford to really get into the character of the two protagonists. Again, you see the beginning of their affair in flashback, the sudden spark when they first touch, and the red hot desire when they first truly look into each other's eyes. When the characters are sent to Phoenix for a convention, you see how their feelings have changed as the height of their passion comes crashing down into the dullness of reality and they each see what the other person is really like. Watching this relationship crumble, and then seeing the unexpected (at least to me) resolution to the story, was very intriguing, and made me want to finish the story as soon as possible. The characters in each story are seekers, in a way. They are all searching for something to make their life complete. They are lost souls, searching for the fulfillment that life should bring, but doesn't always. Having an affair seems to them, at first, to fill that gap, but it never actually does. That's what makes the stories so depressing, in a way: seeing the fruitless search for life. Only one story has what's even close to a happy ending, and even that happiness is caused by the realization that their marriage is truly over. Most of the stories end with the characters having fallen, picking themselves up and resolving to move on through life's dense fog. A little wiser, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Some people never learn. Still, depressing or not, I found all of the stories worthwhile to read. From the short vignettes to the longer pieces, each one contained interesting situations, or a nice twist, or even just making a point about life. I can't say I enjoyed the book, but I certainly did find it fascinating. I have never read any of Ford's stuff, but I may have to now that I've read some of his short fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Psychoanalysis of love failure
Review: Far is the bohemien world of Armistead Maupin's Barbary Lane. Far is the feminist naughtyness of Susan Isaacs' Compromising Positions. I would classify Richard Ford next to the Albee of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf " or Barthes' "Lover's discourse fragments". Ford analyzes human feelings, dissects them,and gives you disconsolate reports on the occasionality of good actions. I appreciate his denouncing of the shallowness of some people's (too many) feelings, and the unhappiness and frustration that superficiality, petty egoism and indifference are causing. I don't agree whit Ford's philosophy, that is mostly chance that make us opt for the good, but I must admit that his stotytelling is masterful.
Rating: 
Summary: a dud
Review: Ford is really straining this time. The labor shows in almost every sentence. This book is full of fakery and contrivance, and it's dead at the core.
Rating:
Summary: Weight without being dull.
Review: Ford's short stories are weighty, without being dull. This weightiness does not derive from any complexity in concept or even character, nor does it derive from prose which is complex. Rather, there is a wealth of detail in terms of what the characters are experiencing. The common subject in this collection is marital infidelity.
Rating:
Summary: Weight without being dull.
Review: Ford's short stories are weighty, without being dull. This weightiness does not derive from any complexity in concept or even character, nor does it derive from prose which is complex. Rather, there is a wealth of detail in terms of what the characters are experiencing. The common subject in this collection is marital infidelity.
Rating: 
Summary: Intimate but cold
Review: I am a great fan of the short-story and I very much enjoyed this book for its 360 degree examination of adultery. Adultery is just one form of infidelity, thus I prefer the former term to described this book. He explores adultery in its variety from its mildest form, complusively watching a naked women in another building while his wife sleeps, to the full blown long-term affair. While the writing is strong, I disagree with a previous reviewer about what he has to say about adultery, I don't think he says much actually. I appreciated the fact that he doesn't place a specific judgement on it, but rather he shows the consequences of adultery and in these, the judgement is illustrated. But I kept waiting and waiting for the characters to divulge their true reasons for committing adultery. I just couldn't find it. The book is full of mid-life characters who seem to be committing adultery out of some "its what you do at this age" mentality, next in line on the college, marriage, house, kids pathway. I don't think Ford really gets to the bone. At times, it seems that just when a revealing insight is about to be addressed he pulls the bullfighter routine and just lets it brush by, merely teasing and toying with the reader. For all of the depth of conversation, I found the characters profoundly flat and cold. Having never read Ford before, I couldn't tell if this was intentional or not. Clearly the most satisfying story for me and not ironically why the book cover is of the train station is the story titled Reunion.
Rating:
Summary: Intimate but cold
Review: I am a great fan of the short-story and I very much enjoyed this book for its 360 degree examination of adultery. Adultery is just one form of infidelity, thus I prefer the former term to described this book. He explores adultery in its variety from its mildest form, complusively watching a naked women in another building while his wife sleeps, to the full blown long-term affair. While the writing is strong, I disagree with a previous reviewer about what he has to say about adultery, I don't think he says much actually. I appreciated the fact that he doesn't place a specific judgement on it, but rather he shows the consequences of adultery and in these, the judgement is illustrated. But I kept waiting and waiting for the characters to divulge their true reasons for committing adultery. I just couldn't find it. The book is full of mid-life characters who seem to be committing adultery out of some "its what you do at this age" mentality, next in line on the college, marriage, house, kids pathway. I don't think Ford really gets to the bone. At times, it seems that just when a revealing insight is about to be addressed he pulls the bullfighter routine and just lets it brush by, merely teasing and toying with the reader. For all of the depth of conversation, I found the characters profoundly flat and cold. Having never read Ford before, I couldn't tell if this was intentional or not. Clearly the most satisfying story for me and not ironically why the book cover is of the train station is the story titled Reunion.
Rating:
Summary: original sin
Review: I am continually astounded and impressed by Richard Ford's writing. "A Multitude of Sins," Ford's latest collection of short stories, cuts open for the reader fresh, bleeding slices of life from a series of marital infidels. Ford's incisive, intuitive skills of observation make you feel free as an invisible molecule of oxygen, permitted access to all of humanity's most private recesses. Ford paints the interior lives of a series of mostly unhappy mid-Western professionals with the unflinching eye of a truly empathetic artist. This is not an easy read, but it is more than worth your time. As Ford chronicles the various hurts and pains accumulated by lives not lived fully and the subsequent emotional dead-ends and disappointments that await most would-be escapees, one gets the sense that these stories are not so much about a multitude of sins, as about a single one. The sin of dissatisfaction might very well be an inherent human condition, a kind of original sin. We've all felt dissatisfaction to some degree with love, unfulfilled promise, and the way things are. If dissatisfaction is something we all have to contend with, maybe we can alleviate it by confessing our own versions of dissatisfaction. As Richard Ford's latest collection of stories, "A Multitude of Sins," makes clear, there is nothing like confession to satisfy the soul.
Rating: 
Summary: what a disappoinment
Review: i have no idea why, but i have been wanting to read this book for quite a while. i finally bought the book and started reading it right away. it is now in it's bag with the reciept waiting to be returned!!! i read 3 of the stories and i don't know if it is just me but i just don't get it. what is it about this book that i missed?!?!? i actually struggled to get thru each of the 3 stories that i read. i don't want to say that i am super DEEP but i usually like and understand books with deeper meanings but i failed with this book. i still think i will buy ROCK SPRINGS because i really want to experience a Richard Ford book.
Rating:
Summary: I think I expected more
Review: I usually jump at the opportunity to hear authors read their own works, due in part to curiosity as to what they sound like, but more for the nuances and inflections only they can give to their written words. With that said, I found Mr. Ford's reading of his own short story collections to be a pretty uninspired affair. Mr. Ford, one of our most celebrated and meticulous authors, is not blessed with a terribly strong reading voice, and he uses an odd, choppy style with numerous inopportune pauses that would indicate (if we didn't know better) unfamiliarity with the stories. I liked Richard Poe's excellend reading of Ford's masterpiece Independence Day much better. Poe breathed a lot more life into the characters. As for the stories themselves, they were all good, and some were excellent. I really enjoyed Reunion, about a man who stumbles across the husband of a woman he had an affair with, in Grand Central Station, and feels oddly compelled to confront. Our protagonist doens't have anything particular to say to the husband of his former lover, who has slugged him in a hotel in St. Louis, he simply wanted to create an experience where before there was none. Other stories explore similar topics of marital infidelity, and the bitter aftermath of doomed affairs. I also really liked the story of the young married couple on the way to a dinner party in their Mercedes Benz station wagon, in which the husband is floored by an admission, by his young trophy wife, that she has slept with their dinner party host. His reactions, and the stony silence that develops between them, are indicative of the strained relations between almost every couple in the collection. My only problem with the stories, after reading about 5-6 of them, is that they are too similar to one another. Ford keeps retreading the same ground, writing about lawyers, realtors, St. Louis and the Mayfair Hotel in a cool, detached third person narrative. After awhile you forget you are reading (or listening to) fictional stories, and almost get a sense you are peeking at notes of a marriage counselor with a clinical sense of detachment. Ford doesn't seem to experiment enough, and sometimes I would get in my car, pop in a tape about unfulfilled 40-ish adulterers, and wonder whether this is the story of the couple in a Canadian hotel, the Connecticut realtors on a business trip to Phoenix, or the Grand Central protagonist reminiscing about his affair at the Mayfair. Each of the stories works well on its own, but reading them back to back you see patterns develop that frankly grow a little tiresome. Read them one or two at a time to enjoy Ford's meticulous prose, and his sharp observations about middle class malaise.
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