Rating: 
Summary: few can write this well
Review: If a short story sticks in your mind long after it has been read that says something about the writers craft. Fords short story called Under the Radar (which is in this book) is a good example of this.
Rating: 
Summary: Astoundingly Poor
Review: If an author sets out to write a collection of short stories about adultery, you'd think they'd have a lo say about it, right? Well, Ford certainly expends plenty of words, but the net impact of them is next to nothing by the end of this incredibly feeble navel-gazing group of stories. Mind-numbingly similar in tone and temperament, the ten stories center of upper and upper-middle class white, middle-aged, married professionals who seem to have drifted into infidelity. Story after story plods cautiously along, poking at the consequences of adultery in a very mild way, with leaden dialogue and a lot of empty moodiness. Adultery is treated almost as a kind of bland rite-of-passage for a disconnected male. Marital infidelity can happen in so many ways for so many reasons, and yet Ford seems interested in only a very limited field of it. I have no idea what his personal background or situation is, but it's a collection you read and leave wishing the author had worked out their issues in therapy or something. If he wasn't such a literary bigshot, there's no way this would have been published-it strikes the same note over and over and over, and isn't provocative, insightful, or even interesting. PS. If you were planning on the audio version, don't. Ford is a terrible reader, sounding like someone reading the telephone book aloud as punishment.
Rating: 
Summary: rather plain, grubby
Review: It's probably unfortunate that I took up this collection after just finishing a collection by the always superb TC Boyle. Ford knows how to write well, but the subject matter leaves him straining for effect. There may be one or two good compassionate stories to write about yuppies cheating on their spouses, but packing a whole book of what can only become redundant (and does by about the fourth story) is a serious drag on the reader. The best story is really the last, The Abyss.I heard another reviewer here praise an earlier collection as superior. I shall head off to the library for that one....
Rating: 
Summary: Strong serious, aimed at their subject
Review: Richard Ford is a serious writer. The times I have talked to him I have felt an almost priestly demeanor and a respectful attitude as he talks about his writing. He writes to find out about things, depict things, get things out of his system, to know what he knows, and share it with the world. It took him most of a good collection of short stories, a novella, and then another long story to get the whole coming of age thing in Montana amidst life crisis out of his system. Some would argue that Independence Day was just an attempt to rest those ghosts! Here Ford deals with infidelities among the upper middle class. Much as I would prefer he return to what he saw when he was teach out in Montana, much as I feel the usual prejudice to dismiss these people, Ford gets close to the struggle inside all of us to feel we are here, we are touched or touching, and to have a little joy. Ford also gets at the relative emptiness of the whole landscape they people populate. Every approach makes the whole thing more precise. Unfortunately, this isn't another Rock Springs, but it is good enough to read and reread and to know it helps us remember what life is like.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Richard Ford is one of my favorite authors. I was hesitant to pick up this book having loved Rock Springs so much. I wasn't sure anything could hold up to that earlier work. This book made me much more appreciative of my good wife and marriage. If a work of fiction changes your outlook on life or causes you to think about your own situations and be glad hasn't it done its job? The stuff Ford writes is important.
Rating: 
Summary: An unflinching yet compassionate study of infidelity
Review: Richard Ford is undoubtedly one of America's finest authors. More than any other writer today, he has a special gift for creating characters with undeniable humanity. In this new collection of short stories, not his best work but excellent nonetheless, each character feels truly genuine, with human flaws and weaknesses that we all can relate to. Infidelity and its consequences is the main theme here, and Ford explores it with all the grace, subtlety, and compassion that readers have come to expect from him. The stories, for the most part, focus on everyday occurrences; Ford's work rarely relies on intriguing plot twists, but rather profound explorations of emotion and the human experience. In "Reunion," inspired by a John Cheever story, a man encounters the husband of a woman with whom he briefly had an affair, and stumbles through an awkward yet revealing conversation, set in the middle of Penn Station. In "Under the Radar," a woman admits to her husband that she had a brief affair with the host of a dinner party they are on their way to attend. In "Privacy," a man takes stock of his marriage after finding himself drawn to his neighbor, whose nude figure he views regularly from his apartment window. In each, Ford is deeply interested in the inner motivations of his characters. What makes them love? What makes them cheat? How do they justify their infidelities, both to themselves and their spouses? And how do they ultimately deal with their own guilt and the pain they have caused to those around them? Each of these questions is answered unflinchingly and unapologetically, but with the tenderness and charm for which Richard Ford's prose is well known.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: The language used by Richard Ford can often feel like a rich, creamy piece of delicious chocolate cake. The reading feels soft and warm, yet under the cover of this warmth and sweetness hide brilliantly strung, sharp, realistically brutal stories. Ford manages to develop his characters in ways that turn his writing into tangible almost painful experiences. The theme is quite delicate here; failing, confused, complex relationships. This book could be seen as a depressing, but maybe more of a voyeuristic read. Let's take "Under the radar" as an example... A revealing multilayered illustration of a bad situation turning worse. The first sentence sets the stage for a perfect tragedy, and the story manages to slowly take us down the slope from bad to worse. As the plot and the complexity of the situation progress, the language keeps the deliciously sweet, slightly southern flavor. Just the first sentence is so good that it needs to be quoted: "On the drive over to the Nicholsons' for dinner - their first in some time - Marjorie Reeves told her husband, Steven Reeves, that she had had an affair with George Nicholson (their host) a year ago, but that it was all over with now and she hoped he - Steven - would not be mad about it and could go on with life."
That's just one sentence... out of an exciting collection of brilliant stories by one of our best contemporary authors.
Rating:
Summary: Strong Stories
Review: The stories in A Multitude of Sins really focus on one central sin--adultery. Infidelity and its various facets feature in all of the stories here, but the stories are in no way repetitive. In one story, a man accidentally meets the ex-husband of his former lover in a crowded train station. Another concerns a woman revealing her infidelities to her husband on the way to a dinner party at the ex-lover's house. Each story focuses on different aspects of the effects of infidelity, so in that sense, there are "multitudes" of sins. This is a well-written collection by a talented author.
Rating:
Summary: Strong Stories
Review: The stories in A Multitude of Sins really focus on one central sin--adultery. Infidelity and its various facets feature in all of the stories here, but the stories are in no way repetitive. In one story, a man accidentally meets the ex-husband of his former lover in a crowded train station. Another concerns a woman revealing her infidelities to her husband on the way to a dinner party at the ex-lover's house. Each story focuses on different aspects of the effects of infidelity, so in that sense, there are "multitudes" of sins. This is a well-written collection by a talented author.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of a disappointment...
Review: What can I say? I think Rock Springs, Ford's previous collection, is one of the touchstone achievements in short fiction in the past 20 years. Needless to say, my expectations for this collection were high. Unlike Rock Springs, which concerns itself primarily with bildungromanesque experiences of youth and rites of passage, Multitude of Sins focuses almost exlusively with marriage, betrayal, adultry, and middle-aged dilemma. Nothing wrong with that at all, but I found many of the stories unneccessarily long-winded--unlike the pared down, lyricism of Rock Springs, here we get (occasionally graceful, yes)meandering and circumlocution that often leads to narrative dead-ends. Gone as well is the sharp dialogue of Rock Springs; here, on those rare occasions when the characters speak, they seem somewhat laconic and leaden. I hate to sound so critical since Richard Ford, for my money, is one of the best writers alive in America at the moment. I also hope that I don't seem as though I was expecting another Rock Springs, because I wasn't. Overall, however, it strikes me that Ford's style---so full of comment and description--- has expanded in such as a way as to be better suited for the craft of the novel, not the short story.
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