Andre Dubus, III

Up next an uplifting book about a cop chasing a serial killer.

Seriously. Almost anything would be less bleak and tragic than this story. About a third of the way in you will realize that no one can come out of this situation well. No one.

It’s easy to sympathize with the Behrani family who came to the US when the Shah was deposed in Iran. He was a Colonel in the air force and thought it would be easy to get a job with Boeing or McDonnell Douglas here, but he didn’t. He’s been fooling show more the world with fake wealth for years in an effort to get their daughter married well. Now she has, dad quits his menial jobs (of which his whole family is ignorant) and invests their remaining savings in a foreclosed house. All well and good. Except that house was foreclosed on in error. A literal typo - wrong address. Still, the house is legally his and his whole future hinges on being able to sell it at a profit.

The former owner, Kathy, has little recourse except to sue the county. You’d think there’d be sympathy for her, too, but it’s her own fault. She willfully threw away county letters unopened. If she’d read at least one of them the entire disaster could have been avoided. Depressed that her husband left her, she can’t be bothered. She goes to legal aid to see what she can do now it’s gone too far and is delusional and pig-headed about her standing. It was really hard to feel bad for her at all.

Then there’s Lester. The deputy sheriff on hand for her eviction. He falls for her and systematically throws away his marriage, his kids, his job and finally his freedom for this woman. Sure, the sex is hot, but the fog doesn’t only obliterate the landscape, but possibly good sense as well. Both of them are so self-destructive and stupid that they deserve each other. It’s just so much sadder that they take everyone else down with them.

Fog is mentioned a lot in the novel and it is a lovely metaphor for everyone’s cloudy judgment and rationality. They’re all crazy and blinded by emotions and cultural misunderstandings. If it wasn’t so gut-wrenchingly awful it would be funny.

Dubus can write the paint off the walls though. The story is told with three main narratives - Kathy’s, Lester’s and the Colonel’s. Managing the variegated syntax of this last story was really perfect. I think he had help from folks who speak Farsi and he tweaked the sentence rhythms and structures just perfectly. By way of context you can tease out the meaning of many Farsi words and phrases peppered throughout. It really was a beautiful piece of writing even if the subject of that writing wasn’t always beautiful. show less

This guy. Andre Dubus III. This guy can write.

I've read authors that create great, deep, layered characters. I've read authors that dive into the human condition. I've read authors that made me feel.

But what Dubus does is a whole other level of magic. His plots are quiet, simmering things. You won't see explosions and fist fights here. Where other others speak, yell, lecture, and scream, Dubus whispers.

So you have to listen a little closer, you have to pay a bit more attention. But the show more payoff is worth it. Because he won't just give you deep, layered characters, he won't just dive into the human condition, he won't just make you feel...he'll also take you so deep into the characters that you know their soul with the intimacy of a lover.

I can't explain it any better than that. Read him. Read anything he's written. show less

This book could have been tighter towards the end; it gets a little bit predictable, and meanders to a close rather than ends. That aside, this is still an incredibly powerful piece of work. It's not a light book to get through; there are no heroes and there are very few innocents. Behrani, Kathy and Lester, three of the main characters of the novel, are all some of the most finely carved characters I've read in a long time. None of them are perfect; they are all fallible, none of them are show more even particularly likeable, to my mind. They are all however incredibly human, with a depth and complexity to their actions and reactions that feel utterly real.

The most important character of all isn't human at all, though. It's the eponymous house that Kathy loses and Behrani pins all his hopes on. It really is exactly like the title says, a house composed of ephemeral, shifting things, the things Kathy wants to hold on to and the things Behrani wants to achieve. There's a real sense of the house shifting what it is, of being all things and all times to all people, as the book progresses.

The prose is beautifully clear; not especially lyrical, but nicely fluid. Dubus also gets my approval for writing English from Behrani's perspective convincingly as the voice of someone who speaks English as their second language; he doesn't fall into cliches, but writes L1 interference convincingly, something which is all too rare. I'm definitely going to watch the movie adaptation if I get a chance, because I have the feeling that Jennifer Connolly and Ben Kingsley could make something truly wonderful out of source material as good as this 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