Frederick Busch Summary

Critical Essay by Richard Elman Domestic Particulars is a story of unspectacular martyrdoms, senseless sacrifices, of the endurance of long subway rides that end up nowhere except in front of dimly l... Read more

Critical Essay by John Romano [Something] exciting is going on in Busch's work that isn't going on anywhere else. Some of his virtues are old-fashioned enough: he's a superb stor... Read more

Critical Essay by Roger Sale The subject of Frederick Busch's intelligent, careful, often brilliant, but inert novel ["The Mutual Friend"] is Charles Dickens, the driven dying Di... Read more

Critical Essay by Allen Peacock Frederick Busch's deeply moving novel [Rounds] probes the harrowed lives of two middle-aged couples struck by recent tragedy…. Faced with a childless voi... Read more

Critical Essay by Peter Kemp Frederick Busch has called his novel about Dickens The Mutual Friend. An alternative title might have been Great Expectorations. (p. 61) The Dickens reassembled in [Th... Read more

Critical Essay by Doris Grumbach [The stories collected in Hardwater Country demonstrates that Frederick Busch] is a skilled writer, as capable of using a woman's consciousness as narrator as ... Read more

Critical Essay by Amy Wilentz To judge by [Hardwater Country] anything Frederick Busch wants to convey in the short-story form, he can. He tells you the small, beautiful truths about the usual short-... Read more

Critical Essay by Frances Taliaferro Frederick Busch has written seven considerable works of fiction since 1971…. His subject is that bare, forked animal, unaccommodated man, in his domestic p... Read more

In the following interview, Busch discusses his works, analyzes his attachment to his characters, and shares insights on his life and his approach to writing. Frederick Busch writes fiction in a ba... Read more

In the following essay, Greiner analyzes Busch's characterizations in regard to definitive gender roles, sexual identity and freedom in Harry and Catherine and War Babies. Not many American ... Read more

In the following review, Fortuna comments on what she considers Busch's adept handling of the moral ambiguity of the modern era in Closing Arguments. Perhaps the last years of a century alwa... Read more

In the following review, Eder finds that the beginning of Long Way from Home would be excellent as a short story, but by stretching the story to novel length, Busch loses the tight plot and seamless f... Read more

In the following review, McGrath feels that Busch demonstrates skillful and powerful writing abilities in several stories in The Children in the Woods, but that many of the tales lack the in-depth cha... Read more

In the following excerpt, Hanstedt expresses the importance of characterization and a well written plot in novels and, using this criteria, gives Busch's Girls a positive assessment. Perhaps... Read more

In the following review of Girls, Eder finds that Busch's characters appear one-dimensional and his heavy-handed morality is occasionally overbearing. In subzero weather, several dozen digge... Read more

In the following interview, conducted in March 1999, Busch discusses Letters to a Fiction Writer and The Night Inspector, and ruminates about the short-story genre. Frederick Busch is one of our mo... Read more

In the following excerpt, Frank rationalizes that being an avid reader directly influences an author's work and outlook on life, and examines Busch's A Dangerous Profession in relation t... Read more

In the following excerpt, Flower compliments Busch's prose in The Night Inspector and comments on what he sees as the novel's gloomy atmosphere in the post-Civil War era. Other writer... Read more

In the following laudatory review, Guy explores the many deceptions and hidden lives in Busch's Don't Tell Anyone. My favorite piece in this collection of expert stories [Don't... Read more

In the following interview, Busch analyzes current critical theory and its effect on writers, discusses the inconvenience of being both a writer and a teacher, evaluates his education and its impact o... Read more

In the following review, Eder praises the stories in Busch's Absent Friends and provides highlights of the pieces he finds particularly poignant. If Frederick Busch wrote about grapes, the b... Read more

In the following favorable review of Harry and Catherine, Eder examines the dynamics of the relationship between the two title characters. Harry: Brave, funny and a little tubby, battered by life i... Read more