SOURCE: A review of Legends of the Fall, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 4, Fall, 1980, pp. 504-06.

In the following laudatory review, Grinnell provides a thematic analysis of Legends of the Fall.

Jim Harrison writes with that clear precision of an experienced hunter who, with a razor sharp knife, can not only field dress a deer but also can skin the hide and membrane from the carcass and leave only venison and bones from what was, a few short hours before, an alive and graceful animal.

I begin with this image intentionally for it typifies both the style and substance of Harrison's prose in the three lengthy stories that constitute Legends of the Fall. These three stories are not for the faint of heart, for there is much death and violence here. Harrison's prose is what Sam Peckinpah's films are to cinema, only better. His writing is...