We Don't Live Here Anymore: Three Novellas

The three novellas collected here -- We Don't Live Here Anymore, Adultery, and Finding a Girl in America -- all concern an overlapping cast of characters, notably our man Hank, a Dubus doppelganger who can't seem to find the right balance between freedom and devotion, but who is drawn with such empathy that we forgive him even as those he has loved and wronged forgive him in the stories. My favorite of the three is Finding a Girl in America, and it's good enough as a standalone novella, but even better when read against the backdrop of the two that precede it. My only gripe about this collection is that the publishers removed "The Pretty Girl", which was included in an earlier edition, but it's a choice that makes perfect sense, because "The Pretty Girl" is not linked with the other three novellas. If you enjoy these stories, consider checking out "Voices from the Moon," Dubus's finest novella, collected in his Selected Stories. Check out "Rosa," too, and, hell, everything he ever committed to print.

Important lessons from this amazing book: 1. Less is not always more, more is more. 2. Characters can be complex. In fact, they must be. 3. Dubus' world is a luscious, richly painted place--why do other writers render their world in black and white? 4. Stories can wrap their arms around you and embrace you for days--even weeks. They can slow you down, in all the best ways. 5. Details--By the end of this trio of novellas, you will have been to another place. It's good to get away. Get lost here. It's an important place to be.

This book is a collection of three novellas. Each containing the same characters as we trace them through the years. The stories follow two young couples, Jack and Terry and Hank and Edith. Jack and Hank are both literature professors at a small New England college and Terry and Edith are housewives and mothers. They're all best friends and they all married too young. This book is broken into three novellas, "We Don't Live Here Anymore," features Jack's first-person narrative. "Adultery" is Edith's version of events, and the final story, "Finding a Girl in America" is Hank's saga of trying to move on after a failed marriage. The characters in these stories are so vivid. That's the one thing I love about Andre Dubus's writing power. The characters just aren't fictional people, they become people living in the house next to you. Sure, it is bleak and depressing at times, but what marriage isn't?

I was assigned "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery", two of the three novellas in this collection, to read in my college novel class. This book is hard to read, not out of difficulty or that it is poorly written, but rather the opposite. It reaches in and squeezes your chest, so it hurts everytime you pick this book up. I loved it. I am married myself and what really got to me was that Dubus is excellent at forcing you to envision yourself in these characters situations. Like I said. . . . it hurts. Is anyone really happy? Great book and a great read. I highly recommend this collection of novellas.

The three long short stories/short novels in this collection were not originally published together but share characters and the theme of the difficulty and complexity of marriage. As the cover proclaims, the form the basis for the new film of the same title. The title story is the longest and the best, narrated by a professor named Jack who is having an affair with his more successful best friend Hank's wife. Jack is married to Terry, who he thinks he no longer loves.... I won't go on about the plot, but I will say that I think Dubus really gets at a confusion in so many men, wanting stability at at the same time something else...(an oversimplification) ....The third story, "Finding A Girl in America" is set some years later...Hank is now divorced from Edith and with another woman, but in some ways his marriage continues. (I thought the middle story, told from Edith's poiont of view, was less successful) ....Funny, lacerating, heartbreaking, this collection is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to this writer. Recommended