Maybe a 3.5? This was just far too rushed to get the emotional impact of the story.

TW: Cheating, homophobia, domestic abuse, child abandon, murder

n  *****SPOILERS*****n
About the book:Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.
Release Date: October 13th,1997
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 55
Rating: ⭐

What I Liked:
t• It's a short book
t• I remember liking the movie like 15 years ago

What I Didn't Like:
t• Dudes are terrible humans
t• The abuse (physical and mental)

Overall Thoughts: This book is short. So short that you really have no idea who these people even are. They meet and decide to share a roll up mat and now they are having sex. These two guys are shit. I find it funny that when it's a same sex couple that's cheating then it's inspirational and sweet, but if it were a straight couple - they are horrible and we shouldn't cheer them on.

There is a moment where Jack comes to visit Ennis and they are barely out of the house before they are making out. Alma catches them and Ennis pretty much tells her to shut up and he'll be home later. He can't even be bothered to buy her cigarettes despite how she would feel catching her husband cheating on her. Yes, cheating. It's still cheating even if they are the same sex.

Years go by (20 years) and Alma gets smart and has moved on - which gives the dudes plenty of time to have sex.

Alma makes a comment about how she knew they weren't really fishing and Ennis being the asshole he is grabs her while she is pregnant and hurts her. He then decides to not see his kids again because it's her fault?

Wow, this was beautiful, really beautiful. This is not counted as "gay parade" story. This is a heartbreaking love story. And the writing was impressive. I was getting goosebumps while reading.

n  He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
...
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.n

"Jack, I swear--"

this line gets me every time.
add The Wings by Gustavo Santaolalla to the mix and i'm crying my heart out.

More of a novella than a short story. Can be read here:


https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.newy...

Lo leí en apenas unas horas. La película es súper fiel a la historia en la que se inspiró y esto me sorprendió. La forma de escribir de Annie Proulx es maravillosa, algo que no había visto antes, pues en unas pocas frases te describe una serie de situaciones de forma directa y concisa sin adentrarse tanto en los detalles y sin quitarle profundidad a la trama o a los personajes.

Le película, en mi opinión, es una obra de arte cinematográfica, con una de las historias más conmovedoras que haya visto. Y, debo decir, está a la altura de portentosa historia que nos relata Proulx en sus pocas páginas.

Absolutamente maravilloso.

This story is every bit as compelling, heart wrenching and beautiful as everyone claims. A true masterpiece of short fiction.

Update 8/10/16

My mind is still reeling with thoughts of Ennis and Jack; the story was simply intimate and heart breaking. It's amazing how much power and weight words can carry with them. Works like Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx have taught me that it's about quality, not quantity. Frankly, any author that can move me to tears in less than 100 pages is a supreme writer and artist.

Sometimes you read a short story that falls a bit short of expectations. Because it would have been a better, or more complete story if it had been longer. This is not how this short story made me feel. In fact, more than sixty pages of this might have been too much. I only wished I had read it before I watched the amazing movie adaptation.

This story, as Julie so cleverly phrased it, is about being in love with someone you can’t have, and few feelings are as violent as that. And I’m willing to bet that few places made you feel the burn of that feeling more than Wyoming in the 1960s. Ideas about masculinity, sex and love die hard in places where a living is earned the rough way.

It’s also about the impossible weight of such a secret, how it taints other good things. Obviously, this is Jack and Ennis’ story, but my heart also broke for Alma, who simply couldn’t understand and yet kept her husband’s secret; and for Lureen, who probably understood too late.

In some ways, it reminded me a lot of “Carol” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), which tackles a similar subject matter, albeit with less tragic consequences.

Be careful reading this: it might rip your heart out.

-

About the movie: it’s sublime. It would have been sublime even if it hadn’t been Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, but they were so freaking perfect. I’ve watched it at least twelve times and cried at every single viewing.

I rarely go to the movies. Truly, the last movie I saw in a theater was Lincoln, in 2012.

But, one day back in 2005, a good friend called and wondered if I'd like to spend that snowy Sunday in a theater with her, watching something called Brokeback Mountain.

Brokeback Mountain? Never heard of it. Sure, I'd go.

Almost no one was in the theater that morning. My friend got popcorn, and I got comfortable. When Heath Ledger appeared on the giant screen, I got sassy, and my friend got uncomfortable.

For those of you who know me, you know I can get very outspoken about my leading men, and Heath has always made my heart beat faster. Before anyone could say “Ledger,” I was making Mmmm, Mmmm yummy sounds and saying things like “Mama like, oh, Mama like.”

My friend slid deeper into her seat and was like, “Rein it in, sister.”

But then Jake Gyllenhaal appeared on the screen and I had never seen him before and I was like, “What's up, Mr. Dimples? Mr. Sparkles? Why don't you come on over here with those shiny eyes?”

I swear I was worse than a 1940s sailor freshly docked at bay.

And just as my eyes were happily feasting on all of that eye candy in Levi's, the weirdest thing happened. . . the Heath character violently grabs the Jake character and they start to have a man-on-man fuck fest. Ain't no other way to describe it, folks.

I remember. . . my hands went numb and I was like. . . WTF? Why are those two hot, hetero guys up there doing that, instead of down here in this row, asking me if I'd like a drink? What is this? I thought we were having a good time, up on that mountain together. (Well, they were, I wasn't).

I was surly after that. Whenever someone asked me if I'd seen the movie, I'd respond with, “Yeah, I've seen the damn movie.”

While other people were getting themselves worked up and quoting scripture. . . I was like, “Why couldn't they have picked less attractive actors?” I didn't have a problem with them being gay, or whatever they were, I had a problem with not being able to imagine them with me. Let's face it, people, you go to a romantic movie, and part of the appeal is imagining yourself in that situation. I wish I had been AWARE of what was going to happen in the movie. I felt. . . taken unawares.

I also wish I had been one of the readers who had known the rather obscure short story when it came out in 1997. I wasn't an Annie Proulx reader yet, but I would become one, in 2013, and fall deeply in love with The Shipping News, too.

If I had read the story, before the movie, it would have been a completely different experience.

Well, anyway, now I have.

I spent last night discovering it, and I can't believe it, but it's one of the best stories I've ever encountered. The writing is stunning, just stunning, and Ennis and Jack's love story pulls you in immediately.

Please, do not mistake me. . . it is NOT a subtle story. The nearly violent interactions between the men in the movie have their basis here, in the original story. . . neither man is a shrinking violet when it comes to his love for the other.

But, oh, it is a love story.

It startled me, stunned me, aroused me, and saddened me. It is truly one of the best works of short fiction I've ever encountered.

And this line: if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.

To me, this story isn't about being gay; it's about being in love with someone you can't have.

Late to the party but I when I did get there I sure as heck enjoyed myself

This book was given to me by a friend who said I cant believe you have never read this or at least seen the movie. Well I hadn't and at 60 pages this short novela has a lot to say and really does pack quite a punch.

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1997 for which it won the National Magazine Award for fiction 1998.

In 1963 two young men Ennis del Mar and Jack Twish are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a seasonal grazing range on the fictional Brokeback mountain in Wyoming where they form a relationship that emotionally attaches them for the rest of their lives.

Terrific storytelling in so few pages and the emotion I felt while reading it really did surprise me. The author's writing and understanding of the characters really makes this story what it is, strong and sympathic characters make for great stories and I really found a lot of emotion in this little novel. A timeless story that that made me think, great character development and writing.

The one thing I did realise when finishing the novel is I DONT want to see the movie as I think the book works very well and while the movie may be great I dont want it to spoil my first impressions on reading this novel as even the actors playing the books characters are way too cute for the characters described in the book.

I really think a book group would get a great discussion from this one.

I think it’s taken me this long to read Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain because the movie left such an indelible imprint on my mind that I didn’t want to have the story told again until its memory had faded a little - otherwise the two tend to blur together and I’m also a reader who craves novelty so I don’t like to read the same story over and over.

And the movie has made its mark on popular culture, for good reason - it really is an amazing work of art. But for anyone who isn’t familiar with the story, it’s about two Wyoming ranchers - Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist - who fall in love and have a tumultuous and doomed affair that lasts several years until society’s prejudices put an abrupt end to it.

One of the many remarkable things Proulx accomplishes is how much she’s able to put into a short story. There’s not a bit of fat to it and yet you get as much as you would from a full-length novel. There’s so much passion and intensity in the scenes, from when Ennis and Jack first tumble together, to the scene where Ennis’ ex-wife Alma confronts Ennis, to Jack’s increased frustrations at not being able to be with Ennis completely - the story starts with the two men meeting as young men not yet twenty years old in 1963 and ends in the early ‘80s; suffice it to say, attitudes towards homosexuality were not the same as they are today.

The dialogue is exceptional, not least because it conveys the characters perfectly, as well as sounding real. As good as Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s performances are in the Ang Lee movie, it doesn’t feel like they had to imagine much - the characters are there on the page. Ennis’ laconic speech, often giving way to physical expression, and Jack’s fiery words. “This ain’t no little thing that’s happenin here” is a standout line, but there’s a reason the line that’s entered popular culture, now and forever, is “I wish I knew how to quit you.” In the context of the story, it’s devastating, but also beautifully captures what love is and what it does to us. It’s pure poetry.

I always suspected this story would be good but I wasn’t prepared for how powerful it is. That ending… This really has to be one of the best romance stories ever written. One thing I didn’t remember from the movie - and the movie is such a faithful adaptation of the source material that it all came flooding back as I was reading - is the explanation for why Ennis only hugs Jack from behind, and it’s such a tragic indictment of the time and world they lived in.

I couldn’t have been more impressed with every single aspect of the story - I loved reading this emotional freight train and wish I’d read it sooner. It’s up there with John Steinbeck’s shorter works like Of Mice and Men. I can’t recommend it higher - it’s the pinnacle of literary art. I try not to use this word often because it should mean something but this story completely deserves it: Brokeback Mountain is a masterpiece.

If I had to describe this story in three words, they would be: beautiful, heartbreaking, and unique.

Let’s put this into context: I received not so good news yesterday at night – I really felt in a bad way, a little bit optimistic though. Before too long, I decided to pick up this book, since I have always believed that a book can help us to face any difficult situation when there’s no one around us at that precise moment. So, I read this one at 2 AM today, while I was listening to Can you feel the love tonight? by Elton John again and again and again, so that I could enjoy this love story even more.

I’d also like to say I’ve never watched the film, nor the trailer, which is based on this book; so, I always supposed this would be a love story, I mean, a completely love story; however, as I said at the beginning of my review, it turned out to be rather heartbreaking. This fact was not such a big problem, since people sometimes need to know the difficulties of others to learn how to overcome their own stuff, for instance, as Goethe said at the beginning of The Sorrows of Young Werther: And thou, good soul, who sufferest the same distress as he endured once, draw comfort from his sorrows; and let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion. Thus, I decided to take his advice, and make things follow their own course.
By the way, now that I’ve read this story, I think it’s going to be a great idea to watch the movie as soon as possible; we’ll see.

In a nutshell, and in order to be truly honest, this book was even much more astonishing and compelling than I could have imagine: the story itself, its very well developed protagonists (which is impressive if you consider this as a really short story), and the affecting ending; overall, it made me feel such things that I’d never felt reading a book before – perhaps you get what I mean after I told you how I felt last night when I was reading it.

And can you feel the love tonight?
It is where we are…