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Bullet in the Brain

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Bullet in the Brain

By: Tobias Wolff
Narrated by: Anthony Heald
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About this listen

The story of a book critic and his final thoughts from short-story master Tobias Wolff...

Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....

©1996 Tobias Wolff (P)2013 Blackstone Audio Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Short Stories Banking

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All stars
Most relevant
'Ok' is the best I can do here. I like short stories, but I don't think this author is for me.
This one is better than ‘The night in question’, but I didn't really like it.

Each to their own though, you may love it.

Hhhmm...

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Portrait of a life in 13 minutes. Very immediate, rather dark but quite funny in places. A great little story.

13 minutes well spent

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I am really not sure how to feel about this very short story about the final moments and final memory of an amusingly awful caricature of a book critic. I wondered if reading a bunch of reviews would help, but this story seeks to be rather polarising with me bouncing around in the middle.

It is undeniably written with exemplary prose and some genuinely amusing, ridiculous, and thoughtful moments and ideas...but there is also a sense that the writing is overwrought and self congratulatorially smug. This is particularly apparent when coupled with the protagonist himself and how the ultimately the story is about the death of an contemptible (misogynistic, possibly racist) critic and the quaint and incongruous memory they have in their final moment.

Good art makes you feel something and I definitely feel things (I just can't tell how positive they are about the story or not), and works can simultaneously be great, while obviously sniffing their own farts, so...yeah. If I'm honest, I think there are so truly exquisite lines, but the smugness spoils it for me.

The performance is spectacular and it's still well worth a listen if you have Audible.

I Feel Incredibly Ambivalent

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This book may be short but just like the man’s brain it conveys a lot of information in an incredible thirteen minutes full of simple yet powerful ideas of the relativity of time and the change of character induced in such a short yet long amount of time.

A book faster and more powerful than a bullet As powerful and as quick as a bullet

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Wow! What fantastic narrator Anthony Heald is! He is perfectly suited to Tobias Wolff's storytelling.

Wonderfully tragic and poignant.

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