Of the collections of Shepard's work, this one features three absolute masterpieces (Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, True West), and the accompanying works are about as wildly idiosyncratic a sampling of Shepard's oeuvre as one could possible expect.

La Turista is one I read years ago, but it's more freewheeling and wild. Tongues and Savage Love are both brief and experimental works, undertaken with Richard Chaikin. And The Tooth of Crime is a bit dated, perhaps, but overall the strongest of the bunch outside of the main three. Many of these are reviewed on here separately, as they've been released individually as well.

It's a bit ludicrous to judge a collection of plays I haven't seen, but the overwhelming feeling for upon finishing the book is that, with the exception of the three big plays here (True West, Buried Child, and Curse of The Starving Class) which are good neo-macho anti-Americana, I'm not sure I can imagine productions of the remaining pieces which would make them appealing to me.

The three "Family" plays, with their odd culinary decisions and odder family dynamics, are pretty ironclad (and I think reading them together helps). Outside the doors of those three houses is a map of abyssal America: land you got ripped off on, a bar out of Western cliché, a golf course, a derelict desert, a liquor store, a cornfield, a makeshift burial ground.

"Tooth of Crime" is a story of competitive cool that itself never manages to be credibly cool (I can't imagine it ever was), only gratingly overwritten. But if you can squint through all that slangy nonsense, the myth underneath isn't a total wash.

The second act of "La Turista," with its wild, grotesque monster images, is some of my favorite Shepard writing, even if the first act doesn't do much.

The looser Chaikin collaborations don't do a lot on the page (though "Savage/Love" is moving in its own way).

1981 True West 5*
Austin, Lee, Saul Kimmer, Mom
"Like a paradise. Kinda place that sorta kills ya inside. Warm yellow lights. ..."

1979 Buried Child (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Tony Award) 5*
Dodge, Halie, Tilden, Bradley, Vince, Shelly, Father Dewis
"I thought I saw a face inside his face."

1976 Curse of the Starving Class (Obie Award) 5*
Wesley, Ella, Emma, Taylor, Weston, Ellis, Malcolm, Emerson, Slater
"That was my chicken and you fucking boiled it! You boiled my chicken! I raised that chicken from the incubator to the grave and you boiled it like it was any old frozen hunk of flesh!"

1974 The Tooth of Crime (Obie Award) 4*
Hoss, Becky Lou, Star-man, Galactic Jack, Referee, Cheyenne, Doc, Crow

1968 La Turista (Obie Award) 3*
Salem, Kent, Boy, Doctor, Son, Doc, Sonny

1981 Tongues 4*
Percussionist, Speaker

1981 Savage/Love 3*

4.5 stars for Buried Child and True West