When he died in August 1988, Raymond Carver had just published what were thought to be his last stories in the collection entitled Elephant and his own collection of stories, Where I'm Calling from.
Five previously unpublished stories have recently been discovered, and this new volume brings together all of his uncollected fiction, including a fragment of an unfinished novel, five early stories, and all of his non-fiction prose.
Three of these late-found stories are fine examples of Carver's late, open style, while two date from his middle period. The non-fiction prose includes all of his essays, together with occasional commentary on his own fiction and poetry, writings on the American short story, and reviews of work by his contemporaries, among them Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and Richard Ford. Also included is Carver's latest essay "Friendship", about a London reunion with Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff.
Call If You Need Me takes us into Carver's workshop, and alongside All of Us: The Collected Poems and Where I'm Calling from: The Selected Stories completes the picture of one of the most original writers in the English language of his generation.
"Raymond Carver has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do, he has invented a country of his own" (Michael Wood New York Times)
"The prose is a prayer book of simple words, unsentimental. Carver's gleam" (Tom Adair Scotsman)
"Carver the writer is still the hero of this story, as this 'last of the last' abundantly proves" (Bharart Tandon Times Literary Supplement)
"In Call If You Need Me, generosity and fidelity to his characters shine from every page... In his style, Carver may have affinities with Hemingway, but his portrayal of relationships between men and women is deeper and more nuanced than anything the old bullfighter ever committed to print" (Toby Mundy New Statesman)
