The Times Are Never So Bad

“The Pretty Girl . . . may be the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction [Dubus] has written.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

Stories of men and women attempting to live together, to tell the truth as they see it (or don’t see it), and to survive the crises, and sometimes the violence, of domestic life. Now included in Andre Dubus''s Collected Short Stories & Novellas) this original edition includes A Father’s Story, as well as the novella The Pretty Girl. Upon its publication in 1991, Tobias Wolff wrote, “''It is a world of secrets,'' says the narrator of A Father’s Story. Andre Dubus’s fine new collection is made of those secrets, observed with an art that is luminous with honesty and generosity. Dubus is interested in essential things—in the shadowy powers that circle our lives and the slender resources of faith and love with which we try to keep them at bay.”