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Dirty Love Andre Dubus III Books

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Dirty Love Andre Dubus III Books

This book was tremendously poignant. I read previous books by Dubus, The House of Sand and Fog, which was wonderful. I also read Townie, which I had to slog through. Dirty Love is a collection of tales set in a New England beach town that are vaguely related. Dubus taps into the inner feelings of these characters beautifully. Mark, the cuckolded husband, whose wife of 25+ years is cheating on him and is deeply in love with her paramour. Mark is almost driven to insanity and it was painful and honest to read his anguish. Marla, a 20 something virgin,overweight and lonely. She meets Dennis, another overweight 20 something and they develop a romance and move in together. She finds that being part of a couple in some ways more lonely than being alone......etc. Each of the stories in this book are woven in such a way to reveal all the inner fears, struggles, insecurities and naked feelings of the characters. I think this was Dubus' best book yet.


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Dirty Love Andre Dubus III Books Reviews

Fascinating set of novelettes whose main characters show up in the other novelettes as minor characters from the same neighborhood. Each is suspenseful and touching, with characters both compelling and repulsive. How can Andre slip so easily from "being" an anguished, yet arrogant, spurned husband to a tattooed, over-pierced, over-exposed teenaged girl who (like many of us) has to learn everything the hard way? He does it very well. Check him out.
I have been following the literary career of Andre Dubus III since I read "House of Sand and Fog." That novel grabbed me by the throat and by the heart. With "Dirty Love" he continues his mastery of place and character, which are two of the things that make him such a compelling writer of both fiction and memoir.

In this latest work, he weaves together four novellas whose characters intertwine. A character may walk out the door of one story and end up on the front porch in the next novella. Dubus is a consummate story teller - both in person and on the printed page. One of the traits that makes his writing so readable and enjoyable is that he writes in gritty detail about places he knows well - the mill towns along the Merrimac River, Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, Salem, Massachusetts. I love Andre's work in part because of his mastery of language and in part becomes he transports me back home. We grew up along the same river banks, and he helps me to recall the pungent smell of the clam flats at low tide, and the sea breeze wafting over the salt marches. He is a writer of senses - sights, sounds, tastes, smells and tactical impressions. Reading his words awakens my senses in ways that allow me to fully enter the world he has created.

Like the tidal Merrimac River that he and I both love, the changing tides in Dubus' life have cleansed him of the rage that flowed within the banks of his soul for so long. In place of that rage is a ferocious curiosity about life and how others live their lives. He notices things, and shares those observations and insights with his readers to that we are moved to care about the fate of a young waitress living with her great uncle because her father thinks she is a slut not worthy of his love. There is an ironic purity about the love that this author has for his motley crew of characters who inhabit the pages of "Dirty Love." I encourage you to read this book and to be uplifted.
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.

Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog was truly one of the most moving and affecting books I've read in the last 15 years, and the film adaptation was powerful and well-acted. Dubus so perfectly told the story of flawed people trying to get what they wanted and felt they were entitled to, with disastrous consequences.

He brings that same literary power (without utter tragedy) to Dirty Love, his collection of tangentially linked novellas about people who want to be happy in love, but the pitfalls of love—infidelity, low self-esteem, foolish mistakes, alcoholism—get in their way. Again, Dubus' characters are far from perfect and their actions don't always make you feel sympathy for them, but their stories are far too common in real life, and they make you feel as you shake your head.

In "Listen Carefully as Our Options Have Changed," Mark, a middle-aged technology project manager, discovers his wife of more than 25 years, has been cheating on him. For a man who spends his days controlling situations, losing control is quite unsettling, and he tries to figure out what his next steps are—kicking her out of the house, begging for a reconciliation, beating the crap out of her lover—or all of the above.

In "Marla," an overweight woman with low self-esteem has always wondered what it would be like to have a boyfriend and envies the ease by which her female colleagues enter relationships. But when she finally finds a man who shows romantic interest in her, she questions whether what she imagined love would be is a fantasy or should be the reality to aspire to.

The main character in "The Bartender" has always dreamed of being a poet but can never pull his poems together to be more than a tool to seduce women. When he finally meets a woman he cares enough about to marry, he dreams of becoming a different person, but even the impending arrival of a baby can't stop his philandering ways.

And in the title novella, a teenage girl named Devon has fled to her elderly great-uncle's home to escape her father's infidelity and the aftereffects of her sexual escapades being posted online. As her great-uncle struggles with his own memories, Devon dreams of starting over, and wonders if an Iraqi vet she's met online might be the answer.

All four of these novellas are tremendously compelling, although knowing Dubus' writing, I kept expecting the protagonists to do something irreparable, so I felt as if I were reading with my hands metaphorically over my eyes. And while these characters are flawed, happily, they don't veer into House of Sand and Fog territory. Dubus is such a terrific storyteller, and he really could expand all four of these into full-length novels. They're not exactly happy stories, but they're definitely realistic, and I can't stop thinking about them.
As a huge fan of his father's work, it's hard for me to read Dubus III outside of the context of his relationship to his old man. But these stories establish him as a force in his own right, building off of the success of the voice he found in TOWNIE and uncovering a seedier corner of New England that his pops never quite got round to fully exploring.
This book was tremendously poignant. I read previous books by Dubus, The House of Sand and Fog, which was wonderful. I also read Townie, which I had to slog through. Dirty Love is a collection of tales set in a New England beach town that are vaguely related. Dubus taps into the inner feelings of these characters beautifully. Mark, the cuckolded husband, whose wife of 25+ years is cheating on him and is deeply in love with her paramour. Mark is almost driven to insanity and it was painful and honest to read his anguish. Marla, a 20 something virgin,overweight and lonely. She meets Dennis, another overweight 20 something and they develop a romance and move in together. She finds that being part of a couple in some ways more lonely than being alone......etc. Each of the stories in this book are woven in such a way to reveal all the inner fears, struggles, insecurities and naked feelings of the characters. I think this was Dubus' best book yet.