Very Good Condition
Volume 3 : The Cross Country Runner brings together Andre Dubus's fifth collection of short stories and novellas, The Last Worthless Evening, and Voices from the Moon-his longest, most masterful novella-with previously uncollected stories, and a new introduction by PEN Faulkner Award-winning author Tobias Wolff. '''It's divorce that did it,' his father had said last night.'' So begins ''Voices from the Moon,'' the 126-page novella that shows Dubus at the height of his empathetic powers: the story alternates between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family; it takes place over the course of a single day. ''How rare it is these days,'' wrote John Updike in his New Yorker review of the novella, ''to encounter characters with wills, with a sense of choice.'' The four novellas and two stories of ''The Last Worthless Evening'' range further than in any previous Dubus collection: racial tension in the Navy; a detective story homage; a Hispanic shortstop; the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet. Time magazine opined that ''Rose,'' the book's final novella, ''by itself is worth the price of the book; it is the most powerful entry in Dubus's impressive canon.'' Finally, this third volume in the series draws together for the first time many of Dubus's previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here in book form for the first time - ''The Cross Country Runner'' - was first published in the long-defunct Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was 30 years old and only recently graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The final story - the western-themed ''Sisters'' - is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at just 63 years old. -- ‡c From publisher's description.
Publication Data:
Author(s): Andre Dubus
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
Pages: 460
Language: en
Category: Literature and Fiction
Genre: Fiction, Literary, Short Stories (single author), Small Town & Rural
ISBN: 1567926169
Kisharon Langdon
Sold by the U.K Charity Kisharon Langdon. Offering Opportunities and Support for People within the Autism and Learning Disability Community.