Andre Dubus, III

I loved "Dirty Love". Four barely linked stories standing on their own in and around Hampton Beach, New Hampshire and Salisbury, MA, lands of discontent. "Listen Carefully as our Options Have Changed" is a sad tale of unfulfillment and how much we marrieds can be unknown each to each. "Marla" settles for nothing like even second best when the alternative is hugging the cat, popping the corn, watching the movies, pretending that it's enough. "The Bartender" tries to turn himself into a show more sympathetic character from a sleaze, doesn't work. "Dirty Love" drags us into the sick sad teenage life of sex shaming and the luck of having an angelic savior uncle.

All sounds depressing, doesn't it? But this book resounds with beauty and sadness, love and squalor. Andre Dubus III is a masterful writer. show less

Andre Dubus writes about characters whose troubles mirror our own. They are worried about money, getting to work on time, their children, their spouses, their aging parents... But within a framework that on the surface appears simple, Dubus finds a way to probe his characters' lives and personal histories deeply and intimately, and, in compelling fashion, to explore complex moral issues that revolve around love, duty, fidelity, and sexual temptation and betrayal. He's at the top of his form show more in this collection of four loosely connected shorter pieces. These are closely observed stories that strip away each character's protective shell to reveal the vulnerable core. A man of late middle age discovers his wife is having an affair, but despite the shock of discovering some uncomfortable truths about himself is still capable of generosity; a lonely young woman desperate for love enters a relationship with a self-absorbed computer geek and can't bring herself to back out when she begins to have doubts; a young bartender behaves stupidly, risking his marriage, only realizing how precious to him his wife and child are when everything hangs in the balance; and in the title story a teenage girl who has been ostracized by her peers because of a sexually explicit video develops a close bond with her elderly great-uncle, but is still helplessly addicted to the technology that betrayed her. These are wise, compassionate and memorable fictions that demand close reading and touch us emotionally and intellectually while teaching us how to survive and endure when the modern world blindsides us. The writing is eloquent and detailed without being florid, only occasionally indulging in verbosity that seems excessive. The meandering final sections of the last piece "Dirty Love" keep the book from a five-star rating, but this is a minor caveat. As accomplished as his novels are, Andre Dubus seems at home in these shorter fictions. These are some of his strongest works yet. One of the best books of 2013. show less

Not a novel in the traditional sense, Dirty Love is four loosely connected novellas delving into the turmoil, trauma and tenderness of love and relationships. Hilariously, my library put a romance sticker on the spine with hearts on it. Uh, no. No HEA ending here. This is not a romance and if you can’t handle fairly explicit sex scenes, don’t read it.

Because the stories all feature different characters (with tiny spill-overs from prior sections) in different situations, there’s a lot show more here to like or dislike depending on your perspective. For example, I thought Mark was a whiny, masochistic asshole and the story a pretty manipulative device. It felt deceptive, but like a magic trick; I kind of enjoyed the fact that he was putting one over on me. The whole magnanimous forgiveness thing. Gag. Wife as just another possession; the age old story.

Marla’s section was the most bland for me because it felt cliched. See, Marla is a fat girl who has never had a boyfriend. Then she gets one and he turns out not to be Prince Charming, but instead is Prince Annoying. She’s going to dump him, but her friends counsel her otherwise, telling her that she’s lucky to have found anyone and she should just suck it up because fat girls have no choice. She does. Ugh. The underlying premise reminded me of that bit in Ferris Bueller when he turns to the camera and shares the fact that Cameron is so pathetic he’ll probably marry the first girl he lays because he’ll have built up that experience so much in his mind. Yeah, like that.

It’s been a long time since the first forest-fire feeling of being engulfed by love and attraction, so Robert and Althea’s situation felt really rushed. Maybe it goes like that sometimes, but I didn’t wonder when it came off the rails. Not only was it fast, but they had zero in common so...it felt weird.

The last story is where the title of the book comes from and boy it makes me glad I don’t have a daughter and that cell phones and the internet hadn’t been invented yet when I was a teenager. Devon is pressured into a sexual encounter then shamed when she is filmed performing the act. Of course once it’s out, there’s no stopping it and she has to leave home to escape the social ostracism akin to the ducking chair in Puritan New England. It also reminded me that women are expected to perform sexually at the drop of a hat; it’s their only function, but they aren’t expected to like it. Girls don’t equate sex with pleasure any more and their partners don’t have to be even the least kind to them, never mind make sex enjoyable. It used to be thought that females couldn’t orgasm, now it’s superfluous; they shouldn’t expect one. Truly sickening and I’m glad I’m not raising a girl these days.

A few lines jumped out at me like -
“...the vodka goes into Mark like a mildly dangerous thought he ignores…” p 37

“It used to be a memory for both of them, but now it’s only his. And when he goes, will it really be gone? Will they all be gone? Some private library burning to the ground?” p 223

I also gotta say that I loved taking a trip back home with this book. So many of the places in New Hampshire and Massachusetts were familiar and it was really nice to have that experience in a book. show less

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: Behrani. An exiled colonel in the Shah's army. Kathy. A fucked-up druggie living off her inheritance. Lester. A major idiot whose law-enforcement career is his last best shot at staying off welfare.

Not one of these people will leave this book better than they entered it. Kathy's only home is the one she inherited, and the county says it's not hers anymore because she hasn't paid the taxes. She has, though. She's completely unable to function in the world show more because she's hazed on drugs for so long that even when she's clean she can't think straight. That means she can't figure out how to prove she has complied with the law.

Behrani can't get an American life going. He has savings (one hesitates to imagine where the money came from originally) that barely keep him afloat, and jobs that demean him but are all a man with no skills except being an Army officer can get. But his son's college money is sufficient to buy a distressed property at auction. Kathy's home, as it turns out. He plans to renovate and flip it, using this as a stepping-stone to American Dream-level prosperity.

Lester comes in as the deputy assigned to be sure Kathy gets out of the home that's no longer hers. Love at first sight! Lame-o Lester and Loser Kathy...surely the white trash Romeo and Juliet!

Pretty much.

Dubus drags us through the legal system as the parties battle out the rights and wrongs of the case. No one here is a good person, just a greedy selfish prick who deserves what, in the end, is meted out to them by the author's just and pitiless exercise of karmic debt collection.

My Review: NOT an uplifting book. My withers were wrung about every twenty pages, and I took frequent breaks in order to console myself with excessive liquor consumption and sordid sexual escapades.

I love a book that brings out the best in me.

There's a scene where Lame-o Lester gets his first-ever BJ from Loser Kathy, which Dubus goes into in a bizarrely flat and affectless way that completely desxualizes the act, makes it a symptom of a pathology and not an erotic or intimate or even sexy development. It's just part of the sickness pervading these broken, unfixable people's existences.

Did you *get* that? A man wrote about the thing most men want more than food and only slightly less than air, and made it *unappealing*.

Dubus is a master of his craft. He is an artist. He can do anything he wants with words to make them dance in the reader's head to HIS tune, screw whatever you were expecting, reader! He can fashion a story that, in its outlines, sounds juicy and ripe with conflict, and make it a sharp object that will deflate whatever happy illusions were still in your head about yourself and this Murrikin Dream we're supposed to be having, reader!

And that is why you should read this book. show less