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.


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.


San Francisco Chronicle
Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase.... [This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration.


The New York Times Book Review, Richard Bausch
... suffused with grace, bathed in a kind of spiritual glow.


From Booklist
In his first collection of short fiction in seven years, the great Dubus returns with 14 luminous stories. A character in the title story remarks: We are "a glorious race. . . . So much suffering, and we keep getting out of bed in the morning." And that is the essence of Dubus' material--battered by life, jaded by too much booze and too many love affairs, these people keep getting up and facing it down, day by day; sometimes they find joy but more often it's heartbreak. Here's Dubus, in "A Love Song," on infidelity: "What began as the scent of perfume on wool . . . led her beyond his infidelity into the breadth and depth of the river that was their sixteen years of love--its falls and rushing white water and most of all its long and curving and gentle deep flow that never looked or even felt as dangerous as she now knew it truly was." Charged with emotion and rendered in fluid, elegant language, these stories speak to the sacredness of life in all its forms. Loneliness, fear, desire, grief--these are Dubus' themes, and he takes them on and never looks back. His gaze is absolutely fearless, and his observations are unerringly precise; let's hope we don't have to wait another seven years to hear from one of our most spiritual writers. Joanne Wilkinson


Review
"Like some of the most satisfying storytellers of the past (Dubus has been compared to Chekhov), he is munificent, spinning out whole lifetimes and recounting events from many characters' viewpoints. For the lyricism and directness of his language, the richness and precision of his observations and the generosity of his vision, he is among the best."
--Village Voice

"Dubus's characters resemble those of Raymond Carver...but the stories stand alone in their idiosyncratic spiritual cast, occasionally religious, more often expressive of devotion to the people he lives among."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."
--San Francisco Chronicle


From the Hardcover edition.


Review
"Like some of the most satisfying storytellers of the past (Dubus has been compared to Chekhov), he is munificent, spinning out whole lifetimes and recounting events from many characters' viewpoints. For the lyricism and directness of his language, the richness and precision of his observations and the generosity of his vision, he is among the best."
--Village Voice

"Dubus's characters resemble those of Raymond Carver...but the stories stand alone in their idiosyncratic spiritual cast, occasionally religious, more often expressive of devotion to the people he lives among."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."
--San Francisco Chronicle


From the Hardcover edition.


Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

From a genuine hero of the American short story comes a luminous collection that reveals the seams of hurt, courage, and tenderness that run through the bedrock of contemporary American life. In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators--Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor.

"A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."--Philadelphia Inquirer


"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."--San Francisco Chronicle


From the Inside Flap
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

From a genuine hero of the American short story comes a luminous collection that reveals the seams of hurt, courage, and tenderness that run through the bedrock of contemporary American life. In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators--Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor.



"A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."--Philadelphia Inquirer


"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."--San Francisco Chronicle

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

James Marcus - Salon

Don't be put off by "The Intruder," the opening entry in Andre Dubus' fine new short-story collection, Dancing After Hours. Once you get past this flat-footed xcursion into Oedipal territory, you're in for a treat, because the remainder of the book shows Dubus in top form, telling stories with marvelous tact and delicacy. Many of them, granted, are on the dour side: when the recently divorced woman in "A Love Song" develops a new passion, for example, she can't help but note "the dark glisten and static quiver of stored tears" in her eyes. Likewise, the male protagonist in another tale is so burned by the collapse of his latest relationship that he vows to hole up in a Mexican village and "look the demon in the eye" — a liquor-fueled form of therapy that will doubtless leave him as miserable as he was in the first place.

Of course, by making joy such a rare commodity Dubus doesn't prevent himself from doing it justice. In "All The Time In The World," a lonely woman named LuAnn Arceneaux falls in love, finally, with the right man, and her happiness transforms everything around her: "She felt her months alone leaving her; she was shedding a condition; it was becoming her past. Outside in the sun, walking to work, she felt she could see the souls of people in their eyes." What love does for LuAnn, the author does for his readers: his stories make the souls of his characters artfully apparent.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer

A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope.

San Francisco Chronicle