Brokeback Mountain (A Short Story) - Annie Proulx - ★★

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AUTHOR: Annie Proulx
GENRE: Short Story
PUBLICATION DATE: October 13, 1997
RATING: 2 stars.


This story has its good moments (the final scene was particularly poignant), but I think my poor experience was a case of expectation mismatch. Based on the little I had heard about the movie, I thought this was a sensitive love story. So the crass words, the lustful portrayal of the relationship and the darker content such as physical violence caught me unawares. The conversation-dominant narrative also didn't help.

This might be a good story for some readers (especially those who favour strong prose), but it wasn't my cup of tea. Mine is clearly an outlier opinion, so just make sure you go in with the right expectations if you wish to give this award-winning story a go.

The story was first published in the New Yorker, for which it won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1998. The expanded version has been published in book form, but if you wish to read the original, you can check out this link:

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