Andre Dubus is a skillful and temperate writer. [Adultery and Other Stories] takes some getting used to. As when a harpsichordist opens his recital with sounds that seem unbearably faint after the noise outside, Dubus invites us into a world of quiet melodies. Gradually the ear learns to hear them. When Dubus writes about growing up in Louisiana, he finds nothing of the Southern Gothic. These fine stories are the equivalent of Hopper landscapes, anywhere in small-town America…. People play golf, go to barbecues, have fights around the Coke machine at school. The mystery is out of all proportion to the events. "Contrition," the best story, is ostensibly about ten-year-old Paul and his brief involvement with the French horn. In fact it says all that ever need be said about the pain of family love. The title story, "Adultery," takes as its epigraph a quotation from Simone Weil: "Love is a direction and not a state of the soul." Dubus constructs a disturbing spiritual framework that mocks the accustomed tackiness of the subject. Less good are several rather trite stories set in the U.S. Marine community. This collection is uneven, but Dubus at his best can evoke thoughts that lie too deep for tears. (p. 87)
Frances Taliaferro, in Harper's (copyright © 1977 by Harper's Magazine; all rights reserved; excerpted from the January, 1978 issue by special permission), January, 1978.
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