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Andre Dubus
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Selected Stories Kindle Edition

by Andre Dubus (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 161 ratings
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Twenty-three unforgettable short stories from one of America’s most celebrated literary masters.

John Updike once said of his friend and fellow writer Andre Dubus: “[He] is a shrewd student of people who come to accept pain as a fair price for pleasure, and to view right and wrong as a matter of degree.” Dubus’s characters are depicted in all their imperfection, but with the author’s requisite tenderness and compassion. After all, they are just as human as we are, and there is much to learn from their complicated, tragic, irrepressible lives.
 
Including such acclaimed masterworks as ‘A Father’s Story’, ‘Townies’, ‘The Winter Father’, and ‘Killings’, the short stories and novellas compiled here represent the best work of one of our most accomplished and acutely sensitive authors. Dubus’s Selected Stories is an anthology unmatched in its collective portrayal of the human condition.
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
 
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  1. Print length
    611 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  5. Publication date
    November 23, 2010
  6. File size
    6251 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dubus, known as one of our most accomplished storytellers, has in his own life recently experienced some of the terrible things that customarily happen in his fiction (last year a car accident cost him a leg). In this fine collection of 23 stories, an iron-pumping hothead terrorizes and rapes his ex-wife; ("The Pretty Girl"); a sadistic Marine sergeant destroys a green recruit; ("Cadence"); a drunken youth kicks his girlfriend to death and leaves her body in the snow. ("Townies"). "New Hampshire is also a redneck state," observes one character. Yet the disorderly lives of these small-town or suburban denizens are rendered in a calm, richly textured, minutely detailed style. Dubus gets under the skin of a 19-year-old baseball pitcher whose wife ditches him for her dentist, a waitress emotionally scarred by her husband's death in Korea, an obese woman who rationalizes her secret gorging on sweets, a divorcing disc jockey coming to terms with his misogyny. Many of these tales are set in his favorite fictional territory northwest of Boston, yet an equal number span the map from Virginia to Texas to California. With unflinching candor Dubus explores the uneasy accommodations of marriage and adultery, the self-deceptions of middle age and the terrors of childhood.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

What John Cheever did for upper-middle-class suburbs the equally talented Dubus does for the blue-collar manufacturing towns of Massachusetts. The most compelling of these finely crafted stories depicts the inhabitants of fading communities struggling to maintain stability as factories close and customary ways disappear. They don't often succeed. "Townies" juxtaposes the ideal of a posh women's college with harsh local realities. A young couple in "Anna" robs a drugstore to achieve a pathetic parody of material success. Characters commit violence for love or revenge without hope of redemption. Often graphic, never unbelievable, the tales are dense with the dark side of the American dream. Recommended. See below for review of a work by Dubus's son. Ed. Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00BBPW790
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (November 23, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 23, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 6251 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 611 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 161 ratings

About the author

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Andre Dubus

Andre Dubus

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Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of the twentieth century. His collections of short fiction, which include Adultery & Other Choices (1977), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), and The Last Worthless Evening (1986), are notable for their spare prose and illuminative, albeit subtle, insights into the human heart. He is often compared to Anton Chekhov and revered as a “writer’s writer.”

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
161 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

bookworm36
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb writing!
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2013
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Andre Dubus is one of the best writers I have come across in a very long time. Being such a huge fan of short fiction I couldn't pass up this anthology. Especially at such a good price and sheer volume of stories in included in the book.

Normally I go for short horror or science fiction stories so Mr. Dubus stories were quite the change up for me. I was not disappointed in the least!!

His experiences in the Marine Corps shows throughout many of the tales and as a wife of a former Marine I enjoyed those stories immensely. Hearing about training in Quantico, VA was very interesting. As my husband's training was done on Paris Island. But the descriptions of boot camp were still alike just the same. But Andre most assuredly has a much more descriptive way of telling of it
Plus spinning it into so many stories of triumph and tribulations makes it so compelling.

I am in not a religious woman and most of the stories had to something to do with the Catholic faith. I was not deterred from the stories because of that fact. Actually I was pulled further into some for my lack of knowledge of Catholicism.

The range of ideas of the stories is incredible. Marriage, love, divorce, religion, to military and so much more!

The book shows just about every emotion there is in this life.
Andre shows the reader just how much we will do for love, respect, honour, a stranger and sometimes just out of self pity or vengeance.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes to read. There is something in this anthology for readers of all types
4 people found this helpful
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Kevin F. Tasker
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, heartfelt collection
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2010
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Andre Dubus led a long, arduous life. He witnessed murders of family members and spent much of his life confined to a wheelchair. Like some of the world's most brilliant writers (Kafka comes to mind), Dubus was able to transform his personal agony into pathos. His characters are at once enormously life-like and bitterly sweet. Sometimes the prose dissolves into talk of wrathed souls and yearning hearts, without feeling cloying or saccharine, a great feat for any writer. Much like Raymond Carver (although a bit more detailed), Dubus is able to craft an entire life in the span of 10-30 pages.
He is a character writer, so don't expect bombastic plot lines or clear-cut resolutions. Instead we are treated to staid slices-of-life, usually spanning only a few days. Standouts include the seminal "Killings" which was turned into an excellent film by Todd Field entitled "In The Bedroom". The story concerns a father's hunt for his son's killer. It's all surprisingly easy, but it leaves a mark on the father's soul. Similarly, in the story "Rose", we meet a character through the foil of an unnamed narrator who frequents, like many of Dubus' denizens, Timmy's bar, a ramshackle but friendly establishment. Rose has been wronged by her ex-husband and the grim details of their final night together gave me chills, purely from an entertainment standpoint. When the smoke settles however, you realize how scarred Rose was by her ordeal- mentally as well as physically. I really felt her pain.
Of course there are some humorous, touching stories laced between the stories of battered women and murder. "If You Knew Yvonne" is about a boy's struggle with "self-abuse" conflicting with his faith (Dubus was a very devout man), culminating in his use of a young lady to fulfill his desires to point that she remarks, "It's all we ever do, Harry, it's all we ever do..." In context, this is a deeply heartbreaking line. I could really identify. We've all had relationships where we used people and then moved on, only to regret it later.
There are some throwaway pieces such as the first story and some stories about soldiers that didn't interest me, but overall this is a really poignant and well-styled collection, minimum yet multi-layered, dark yet enduring. Dubus' character sketches mesh with the hurting world and draw to life a hope in humanity.
11 people found this helpful
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Ernest Ohlmeyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping stories of human isolation, disconnection and renewal
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2023
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It is perhaps true that not too many readers have heard of Andre Dubus (pronounced like "dabuse"). With the exception of one early novel, he has devoted himself exclusively to writing short stories and a few novellas. But what stories he can write! I first encountered him in the collection Dancing after Hours, for which I wrote an Amazon review. This current compilation of Selected Stories is equally as good and contains some of his most memorable stories. Some of these are dark and complex with characters that exhibit all of the human frailties and moral shortcomings. But even in the least admirable characters, Dubus is generous in reminding us that they are not all bad and retain some hope of redemption. Such human compassion and empathy is a hallmark of his work and never waxes into sentimentality. He cares deeply for people and tries to get us to recognize that many of his characters show us a mirror of ourselves. Another unique feature of Dubus' stories is their remarkable compression. He is said to have produced drafts of considerable length only to have the final story be just a few pages. He apparently believed that what you leave out is often just as important as what you put in. Another notable feature is his ability to describe his female characters as if he were inside them, without any sentimentality or male condescension. I would rate Adultery, A Father's Story, The Curse, and Voices from the Moon among the best in Selected Stories. In Adultery, a woman senses the slow dismantling of her marriage, when her husband announces he wants to take other lovers. Although the wife is allowed to follow suit, she finds this open marriage concept to be shallow and demeaning. She eventually meets a man (an ex-priest) who she falls in love with even though he is dying of cancer. In the end, she resolves to leave her husband and embrace the new and genuine love she has found. A Father's Story concerns a divorced, but religiously devout, man who is forced to make an agonizing choice. His daughter, who is visiting, hits and kills a man while driving intoxicated. The father must decide whether to report the incident or cover it up to save his daughter. Even though his religious beliefs would urge the former, he decides that protecting his daughter is morally justified and refuses to "confess" this act as sinful. The Curse is a gripping story in which a bartender encountered a group of motorcycle bums when he is alone in the bar one night. A little later, a young girl comes in and the bikers proceed to rape her. They prevent the bartender from intervening and subsequently leave. Even though he tries to help the girl, she has hatred in her eyes and curses him for not preventing the rape. The man is consumed with guilt from then on. Lastly, Voices from the Moon is one of Dubus's finest stories and is actually a novella. It is an excellent example of a story told from multiple perspectives involving a wife, her ex-husband, their two sons and a daughter, and one son's former wife. Their entangled world is fractured when the husband takes up with his elder son's ex-wife. As one commentator puts it, the story exhibits elements of "religion, guilt, compassion, sex, spirituality, tenderness, acceptance, violence and morality." In the end, the wife consoles her eldest son and tries to make him accept his father's apparent betrayal so as to keep the family's mutual love and acceptance together. Andre Dubus must surely rank among the most gifted of modern American story tellers. I recommend him highly.
2 people found this helpful
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Jim Defilippi
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent Sories
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2023
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This man is the master of American short stories.
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Top reviews from other countries

cr1y8391
3.0 out of 5 stars Stories from a decidedly masculine viewpoint
Reviewed in Mexico on December 23, 2022
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Dubus is no Hemingway - he doesn't write about adventure and warfare - but he brings a masculine viewpoint to events on the (mainly) domestic front, one that might be thought to be under-represented in today's literary short fiction.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure discovered
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2017
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A wonderful writer of precise time place and character - both compassionate of human folly and sharp in his estimation of what it means
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Mike
1.0 out of 5 stars Still havent received it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2012
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Paid for it but never got it. Hope it was good. A disgrace. Be careful of ordering from this sourcve
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