SOURCE: Montrose, David. “Waiting for the Future.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4321 (24 January 1986): 82.

In the following mixed review, Montrose provides a stylistic overview of the stories in Tobias Wolff's Back in the World.

The title of Tobias Wolff's second collection of stories comes from a passage in “Soldier's Joy”, in which his protagonist, Hooper, reminisces about the certainty found on combat duty in Vietnam:

We didn't know it then. We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it's been nothing but confusion.

Hooper has remained a soldier, hoping he will some day recapture that order and clarity. Meanwhile, he resentfully suffers the “chickenshit” and “clutter” of his present life, treating it as a sideshow to the...