- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; 9th edition (Mar 4 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679751149
- ISBN-13: 978-0679751144
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 1.3 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 240 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #470,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Over two decades, Andre Dubus has proven himself an essential American writer. "He restores faith in the survival of the short story" (Los Angeles Times), and now - with his first collection in nearly ten years - he demonstrates more powerfully than ever before both his mastery of the form and his understanding of our imperfect lives. In each of the fourteen stories in Dancing After Hours, Dubus uncovers the mystery of ordinary life as his characters - often perseverant, yet occasionally crazed by desire, loss, or disappointment - wrestle with love, faith, and luck. Whether at a roadside bar or a family camp, in the everyday rigors of domesticity or its violent extremes, these lives unfold with an inevitability that is moving, sometimes redemptive, always surprising.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Dubus's (Broken Vessels) first story collection in nearly a decade centers around the concerns that have informed all his writing: spirituality, Catholicism, adultery, love and the difficult attempt to sustain it through marriage and family-and, more broadly, the ways lives can suddenly change, sometimes with sudden cruelty, sometimes with grace. Two stories among the 14 here are particularly fine; both gain resonance from the way Dubus's own life was affected by a tragic accident. They are "The Colonel's Wife," about a retired Marine whose relationship with his wife is altered in complex and surprising ways after he breaks both his legs when his horse falls; and the magnificent title story, which concerns a man turned into a quadriplegic by a freak diving mishap, but whose continued zest for life helps bring other people together. Also very strong are the four stories that chronicle the lives of Ted Briggs and LuAnn Arceneaux, and their love for one another, by portraying their lives before they've met and tracing them through a decade of marriage. Dubus's material can be seen as either slightly old-fashioned or as timeless, particularly since he is unapologetically concerned with the spiritual and religious health of his characters. Hopefully, this collection will serve to introduce this important and consistently fine writer to the wider audience he has always deserved.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Short Story Rebirth,
By
This review is from: Dancing After Hours: Stories (Paperback)
These days it seems that all the drama in life in fiction is focused on the under 30 crowd. "Dancing After Hours" re-introduces life into the 30+ short story protagonist, giving us realistic daily lives spiced with sin, redemption, and ponderings that make it seem not so bad to keep getting older. The well-established setting of Boston does not beat you over the head, but subtly insinuates itself over the first three stories. In short, it's highly enjoyable with a simple feel.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a master, but a master artisan,
By "mrlombaz" (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dancing After Hours: Stories (Paperback)
The back blurb makes some pretty hefty comparisons that, while vindicating for those of us who see Dubus as an underappreciated talent in an underappreciated genre, the collection doesn't quite live up to.Dubus is not a master so much as a master artisan. He's not Michelangelo, he's one of the anonymous apprentices who did most of the brushwork. The stories are paragons of craftwork, written with a wonderful tightness and vividness that never fails to satisfy. The much-anthologized starting piece, "The Intruder," begins asking the questions that permeate most of Dubus's work--questions about the lines between dreams and dreamers, about the bright little worlds people invent for themselves in the face of life's relentlessness. At the same time, you may find yourself thinking "haven't I read this somewhere else?" Dubus is very skilled at staying inside the lines when he colors, but the effect gives the appearance of variations on Cheever, Anderson, O'Conner and (most prominently) Carver. Where are the risks? Dubus never really dares to wander out on his own limb and so I think the posthumous (post-"In the Bedroom") drumming of his significance might have gotten a little out of hand.
4.0 out of 5 stars
THIS IS YOUR LIFE,
By Sesho (Pasadena, TX USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dancing After Hours: Stories (Hardcover)
After finishing this collection of stories I am asking myself just how good was it? The hype on the back of the book compares Dubus to Chekhov, Carver, and Flannery O'Connor. It might be that good. As you're reading the stories, most of which are about spiritual crises, or the equivalent, you begin to see the universality in these microcosms of life. The writer and the characters draw you into a quest for meaning and a struggle to reach into the past and change everything you regret. There are a couple of running characters in the stories who give a collection already united by theme the feel of a novel. Some of the best stories are "Blessings", in which a woman tries to sort through her emotions of a fishing trip in which the boat sank. Her family had to fend off shark attacks until they were rescued. It's a great combination of remembrance and violence. Also, "All the Time in the World" in which a woman is desperately trying to find a husband, not just a lover. I could go on for a 1,000 words about the beauty of the prose of each story but I won't. Suffice it to say that when you read these stories you see yourself reflected back through them or, if not personally, through the experience of someone you know. Whether its the questioning of existence, an affair, the senselessness of corporate America, crime, adolescence, love, regret, or physical disability. Every person seems represented here, like some great Walt Whitman poem singing the unity of everything and everyone. There was only one story that I had trouble with and it involved a woman fighting off two thugs who followed her home to rob or rape her. The way the action was described it seemed like the screenplay for some bad japanese karate movie. And sometimes it seemed as though Dubus uses the setting of a story just as background. It doesnt really matter to the telling of the story but he spends paragraphs describing what's going on as the characters walk and talk for example. I understand that he was trying to show the indifference of the outside world to the internal problems of the characters but it got a little old. But these are minor complaints. Overall, it was a great collection, which settles my own question about how good it was.
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