THE CAGE KEEPER

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 1988

And Other Stories Seven plain-spoken, grimly realistic tales add up to a powerful if humorless debut--stories that get the blood pumping and the chest pounding, but that offer little relief. And that seems to be the point. Dubus draws his narrative energy from class conflict, and his sympathies clearly reside with the lumpen proles who people his sad fictions, while other classes come in for some thinly disguised contempt. The title piece pits a young guard in a minimum-security prison against his kidnapper, a nasty prisoner who reveals his sorry past on his crazed escape to Canada--a ride that ends early in bloodshed, but not before the naive captive falls for the old con's hard-luck story. The equally guileless cabdriver in ""Duckling Girl,"" who hopes to become a poverty lawyer, has a few of his ideals shattered when he picks up a trio of down-and-outers: two-violent, coked-up boys, and the ""hound doggish"" girl with them, herself a victim of incest and physical abuse. Betrayal figures in the muddled emotions of the recently released convict in ""Forky"" and also in the tale of a waitress who cheats on her lover, a tormented Viet vet (""Mountains""). Things turn out badly in ""White Trees, Hammer Moon,"" a lengthy account of a disastrous camping trip. Two remaining stories involve hunting: In ""Wolves in the Marsh,"" a nine-year-old boy, disturbed by his parents' marital problems, shoots a woodpecker with his BB gun--a pathetic version of the Great American Hunt; and ""Last Dance"" finds a young northerner down on the Louisiana bayou hunting logger. head turtles with some good ol' boys (in its all-too-neat ending, the disembodied but still-beating heart of the turtle becomes the correlative of a human love that transcends separation). So much sorrow and forgiveness border on the maudlin, and tend to rationalize the worst kinds of behavior--the kinds Dubus excels in depicting.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1988

Categories: FICTION