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Dancing After Hours: Stories
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679751144
Edition: 1st Vintage Contemporaries Ed
ISBN: 0679751149
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: March 04, 1997
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: March 04, 1997
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
Over two decades, Andre Dubus has proven himself an essential American writer. "He restores faith in the survival of the short story" (Los Angeles Times), and now - with his first collection in nearly ten years - he demonstrates more powerfully than ever before both his mastery of the form and his understanding of our imperfect lives. In each of the fourteen stories in Dancing After Hours, Dubus uncovers the mystery of ordinary life as his characters - often perseverant, yet occasionally crazed by desire, loss, or disappointment - wrestle with love, faith, and luck. Whether at a roadside bar or a family camp, in the everyday rigors of domesticity or its violent extremes, these lives unfold with an inevitability that is moving, sometimes redemptive, always surprising.
A New York Times Notable Book of the YearFrom a genuine hero of the American short story comes a luminous collection that reveals the seams of hurt, courage, and tenderness that run through the bedrock of contemporary American life. In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators--Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor. "A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."--San Francisco Chronicle
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Adolescent Waste of Time and Paper
This has to be one of the worst books I have ever read. You go from story to story hoping that the next one will be engaging or interesting, but it never happens. Each of the stories in this book could have just have easily come from a 15 year old writing English assignments who also happens to have a bizarre fascination with bowel movements and bodily functions in general. In summary, truly awful. Don't waste your time or money on this one. Keep looking.
Rating: - Short Story Rebirth
These days it seems that all the drama in life in fiction is focused on the under 30 crowd. "Dancing After Hours" re-introduces life into the 30+ short story protagonist, giving us realistic daily lives spiced with sin, redemption, and ponderings that make it seem not so bad to keep getting older. The well-established setting of Boston does not beat you over the head, but subtly insinuates itself over the first three stories. In short, it's highly enjoyable with a simple feel.
Rating: - Not a master, but a master artisan
The back blurb makes some pretty hefty comparisons that, while vindicating for those of us who see Dubus as an underappreciated talent in an underappreciated genre, the collection doesn't quite live up to.
Dubus is not a master so much as a master artisan. He's not Michelangelo, he's one of the anonymous apprentices who did most of the brushwork. The stories are paragons of craftwork, written with a wonderful tightness and vividness that never fails to satisfy. The much-anthologized starting ... Read More
Rating: - THIS IS YOUR LIFE
After finishing this collection of stories I am asking myself just how good was it? The hype on the back of the book compares Dubus to Chekhov, Carver, and Flannery O'Connor. It might be that good. As you're reading the stories, most of which are about spiritual crises, or the equivalent, you begin to see the universality in these microcosms of life. The writer and the characters draw you into a quest for meaning and a struggle to reach into the past and change everything you regret. There are a couple ... Read More
Rating:  - Not as good as Selected Stories
I read Dancing After Hours immediately after I read Selected Stories by Andre Dubus. I found Dancing After Hours not as enjoyable. It seemed to meander and was not as concise as "Selected". By being able to compair the two, I probabally gave this book a disservice, because the ability of this man to flat out write is undeniable.
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