Description
Book SynopsisIn this heartbreakingly beautiful book of disillusioned intimacy and persistent yearning, beloved and celebrated author Andre Dubus III explores the bottomless needs and stubborn weaknesses of people seeking gratification in food and sex, work and love.
Trade Review"First rate fiction by a dazzling talent. (starred review)" -- Kirkus Reviews
"Reading these stories is like visiting a classic steakhouse where the coolly professional waiters don't hold your cultivated taste for high-concept haute cuisine against you, but rather decide to remind you what you've been missing by giving you one of the best dining experiences you've ever had." -- Jeff Turrentine - New York Times Book Review
"Highly recommended…. Filled with heartbreak, slices of happiness, and unrelenting hope." -- Lisa Block - Library Journal
"It’s that just-out-of-reach desire that creates such poignancy in each of these stories, including one about a philandering bartender named Robert, who likes to pretend he’s a poet. He’s not, but Dubus is. He’s got a transparent, easy style that’s never self-consciously lyrical but constantly delivers phrases of insight and gentle wit that lay open these characters without scalding them with irony, as we’ve come to expect from so many clever novelists." -- Ron Charles - Washington Post
"I can think of no novelist who renders the gritty, down-and-out corners of New England better than Dubus, and those beautifully specific, contained slices of American life open into whole universes of love, violence, guilt, and betrayal." -- The New Republic
"Powerful… lush." -- Anthony Doerr - Boston Globe
"Fabulous…[Dubus’s] writing is as gorgeous as ever." -- Kim Curtis - Associated Press
"[Dubus] writ[es] with…winning candor and intelligence." -- Mark Athitakis - Star Tribune
"Staggeringly good… . Dubus can home in more quickly and efficiently on a character’s inner life than any writer I’ve encountered in recent memory." -- Jeff Turrentine - New York Times Book Review
"Intimate short stories and novellas about the difficulty of sharing lives, about betrayal and fidelity and the emotional violence we inflict on the people we love." -- Nina MacLaughlin - Boston Magazine
"Dubus delivers strong insights into bad behavior." -- Mary Pols - San Francisco Chronicle
"Gorgeous." -- Chloe Schama - The New Republic
"[N]obody does quiet desperation better than Dubus." -- The New Yorker
"The loosely linked stories vividly paint the intensity of despair, uncertainty, loneliness and affection, and the many demons that torment the soul. Dubus’s offerings feel intimate and are powerfully executed." -- April L. Judge - Library Journal
