THE WINTER FATHER

Name: THE WINTER FATHER
Author: Andre Dubus
ISBN: 978-1-56792-617-0

by Andre Dubus ; edited by Joshua Bodwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2018

This set, comprising this volume and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, will likely do much to revive interest in Dubus’ early work.

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Second of a two-volume collection of short fiction by Dubus (Broken Vessels, 1991, etc.), gathering the previous volumes Finding a Girl in America (1980) and The Times Are Never So Bad (1983).

In his lively introduction, Richard Russo posits that Dubus’ (1936-1999) often awkward, often confused characters “are too shy or inarticulate or uneducated or lacking in self-awareness to speak for themselves.” A fine case in point, as he notes, is Dubus’ story “Anna,” in which the title character, long envious of the good luck of those who can buy the things she can’t afford, spends part of the proceeds of a clumsy robbery on a “round blue Hoover vacuum cleaner” whose cord is longer than her apartment and that, in the end, doesn’t do much to elevate her from a humdrum existence of drugs, beer, and laundromats that toss her clothes “like children waving from a ferris wheel.” If literature is populated, in the main, by unhappy characters, Dubus’ are unhappier than most, caught up in cheerless lives as bank branch managers or dollar-store cashiers; there’s a kinship with Raymond Carver in Dubus’ attention to working-class people, but he is the greater master of meaningful compression, in which a whole novel is packed into a couple of sentences: “He bled to death, so even then she could have done something. I want to hate her for that. I will, too.” Dubus’ bleakly proletarian settings, featuring such things as a dumpster “on whose lee side teenagers on summer nights smoked dope and drank beer,” are themselves whole universes, as are the military environments in which his stories are sometimes set; all offer a kind of rough humor (“sometimes she disliked him for being alive”) in the face of the endless dissatisfactions and disappointments of life.

This set, comprising this volume and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, will likely do much to revive interest in Dubus’ early work.

Pub Date: June 20, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-56792-617-0

Page Count: 440

Publisher: Godine

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER
by Andre Dubus ; edited by Joshua Bodwell

- BOOK REVIEW
WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
by Andre Dubus ; edited by Joshua Bodwell

- BOOK REVIEW
MEDITATIONS FROM A MOVABLE CHAIR
by Andre Dubus

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.