White People

This is a wonderful book that exceeded my expectations. It is a collections of stories (four are different stories about one family; the others are not related to that family.) mostly about white people and their sometimes painful and just plain incompetently managed relationships. The characterizations are subtle and imaginative. There is one long story in the end that is about a relatively poor young man and his appalling but finally deeply respectful relations with some black people. this story blew me away by the subtlety of the relationships and the surprising outcomes.This author is greatly underappreciated.

Terrific book, and a new "favorite author" find in Allan Gurganus. White People is a book of short stories, but they read like a novel made up of letters and memories of members of the same family. Indeed, the human family. Gorgeous stuff. I'll be rereading this set of stories again.

Very enjoyable reading. Reading Gurganus is like listening to Prine; incredible knowledge of human nature applied perfectly with humor. I saw myself in his stories as well as others whom I know.

Simply excellent! All our weaknesses (us white people, I mean) exposed.

I bought this so long ago.. I loved Gurganus' "Oldest Living Confederate Wife", so I thought it would be a safe bet; I didn't like it at all. I didn't even finish reading it.

These stories are great reading, and not as difficult as theauthor's huge first novel, which I also read. The author likes toconclude his stories with a surprise at the end, which seems toalways leave a lump in my throat. In at least two stories,*Blessed Assurance* and *Reassurance*, this technique isparticularly effective. The preceding tales are worth the priceof the book. If you want to read the best of modern shortfiction, you can do a lot worse than this book.

This is an amazing group of short stories, beautifully written, soulful, often with an edge, a tension, and so real. My favorite of them all is the last story. Many others captured me completely. A definite great.

Allan Gurganus is the Pope of the Prose I can say that these stories--along with every other considered expenditure of ink from Gurganus' pen--are spawned of the same glorious stuff from which his earlier materials have hailed: Equal measure of intellect and imagination, with the penetrating consciousness of a God and the compassionate and deliberate sensibilities of a Son left much alone in the world by that God. Allan Gurganus' auspicious and Herculean talents have yet to be fully reckoned by either readers or critics, and I doubt they will be in his lifetime or mine. A shame, as they soar abundant and effortless above his contemporaries, a testimoney to the very best that preceded him and a testament to those that may come after.