In the Garden of the North American Martyrs is about a mostly deaf female college professor trying to get a job in a men’s market. It also seems to be a critique of writing and hiring culture. My two favorite parts of the story include its complaints about Oregon weather — which I appreciate as a native Oregonian — and its finale. I won’t spoil the latter, but it embodies what I love most about Tobias Wolff, which is his ability to finish a story with a single compelling line that pulls all the pieces together.

“It was cashmere and Mary hadn’t worn it since moving to Oregon, because people there thought you were pretentious if you had on anything but a Pendleton shirt or, of course, rain gear.”

“Some juvenile delinquents had heaved a brick through the windshield on the driver’s side, so the cold and snow funneled right into the cab. The heater didn’t work.”

Hunters in the Snow is about three “friends” whose unhealthy and asshole behaviors get them into all sorts of trouble. I find this story captivating because of how each man is an enabler for each of the other’s bad choices, all in the name of being “friends”. And while I wouldn’t want to meet any of these people in person, they are so well written that I feel like I know them perfectly. And once again, Wolff has the perfect ending line that brings together all the elements of the story and confirms what we knew from the first description of their truck: that this was not going to end well.

Bullet in the Brain is the story that started it all for me. The tale follows a literary critic and his final thought before he is unceremoniously killed in a bank heist. Not only is the story self-aware, but it also takes a metacognitive look at what made this man into the grumpy, sarcastic, mess that he was. It traces his journey and ties his last thoughts directly to what caused him to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong attitude. And it’s beautiful.

“Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, ‘passed before his eyes.’”