SOURCE: "The Way We Live Now: The Fiction of Andre Dubus," in Book World—The Washington Post, January 11, 1987, p. 7.

In the following review, Sullivan traces some of the common elements of Dubus's short fiction that appear in The Last Worthless Evening.

In an age when short stories all too often mask human suffering with self-conscious cleverness, material clutter and bland irony, the short fiction of Andre Dubus is a tonic to the spirit. His characters usually feel their suffering, sound its depths, and talk about it, sometimes, expansively—and even share what they learn with the reader. They draw us directly into the burning center of their thoughts and feelings.

The Last Worthless Evening, Dubus' newest and perhaps finest collection of novellas and stories, has many of the elements his readers have come to admire since the publication of Separate Flights in 1975. Aching loss and disappointment are still...