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Start giftingThe Winter Father
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Learn moreWhile the title novella of Dubus’ Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection’s opening story strikes a much darker tone: “Killings”—the basis of the Academy Award–nominated film In the Bedroom—is a swift tale of revenge that leaves readers wondering what they might do in the name of family love.
Dubus’ prowess with narrative compression is on full display in the story “Waiting”: the hollow ache experienced by a woman widowed by the Korean War took Dubus fourteen months to write and was more than one hundred pages in early manuscript form but spans a mere seven pages in published form.
Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates called “The Pretty Girl”—the opening novella of The Times Are Never So Bad—“the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction [Dubus] has written.”
Richard Russo’s introduction to this volume grapples with his complex feelings on reading Dubus’ work over many decades, but when it comes to the much-anthologized masterpiece “A Father’s Story,” Russo writes: “I won’t mince words. It’s one of the finest stories ever penned by an American.”
Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered among the most talented American short-story writers of his generation. Born and raised in Louisiana, he spent his adult life living and teaching in blue-collar mill towns in northern New England.
Dubus’ short stories and essays appeared in distinguished literary journals and magazines across the country, and were selected for numerous editions of the Best American Short Stories series, as well as the O. Henry Award and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Dubus’ work earned him MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and nominations for a National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize.
In addition to seven collections of stories and novellas, Dubus published one novel and two collections of essays. The award-winning films In the Bedroom and We Don’t Live Here Anymore were adapted from his stories.
Dubus is buried in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Read by Robert Fass, Prentice Onayemi, Allyson Johnson, Justin D. Torres, Vivienne Leheny, Jennifer Ikeda, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Raphael Corkhill, and Vikas Adam
Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto . . . with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.
Bronson Pinchot began talking at 9 months of age. Today, half a century later, he talks into a microphone in a soundproof booth for a living. In between, he attended Yale University as well as the acting programs at Shakespeare & Co. and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.
Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration.
Hillary Huber is a multiple Audie Award finalist, an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, and an AudioFile Best Voice. She has recorded close to three hundred titles, spanning many genres. A huge fan of audiobooks, when she's not narrating one, she's listening to one!
Reviews
“Andre Dubus, one of the twentieth century’s most gifted short-story writers…like Raymond Carver, became a master of the form.”
“The short story never rested in more honest hands than when Dubus wrote it.”
“In each surprising tale, Dubus, equally empathic in portraying women and men, tackles with supreme candor precision, artistry, and valor the full emotional and moral weight of love, marriage adultery, friendship, parenthood, ambition, selfishness, and loneliness, subtly critiquing the social mores versus questions of self and faith.”
“This volume and We Don’t Live Here Anymore will likely do much to revive interest in Dubus’ early work.”
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