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Andre Dubus III's first novel in a decade is a masterpiece of thrilling tension and heartrending empathy.
Few writers can enter their characters so completely or evoke their lives as viscerally as Andre Dubus III. In this deeply compelling new novel, a father, estranged for the worst of reasons, is driven to seek out the daughter he has not seen in decades.
Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his arms by police. Now in her forties, Susan still suffers from the trauma of a night she doesn't remember, as she struggles to feel settled, to love a man and create something that lasts. Lois, her maternal grandmother who raised her, tries to find peace in her antique shop in a quaint Florida town but cannot escape her own anger, bitterness, and fear.
Cathartic, affirming, and steeped in the empathy and precise observations of character for which Dubus is celebrated, Gone So Long explores how the wounds of the past afflict the people we become, and probes the limits of recovery and absolution.
"Gone So Long is an astonishment. I love this book so much, the humanity in it. I love every single person in it, they are so real, these people - I know them and love them all. I wept for them, I did. Dubus is just so good and real and true, he doesn't pull one sentimental punch the whole time - extraordinary. I thought about those people as I was walking down the sidewalk, and they are inside me as well, not just thoughts that go by. I love this book to pieces." - Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge
"I tore through this haunting novel about people driven by pain beyond the reach of love and forgiveness, and the roads they use as they seek their way back. It hits just the right note at the end, and I'll be thinking about Susan a long time. A hell of a read." - Phil Klay, National Book Award–winning author of Redeployment
"Well, he's done it again, hasn't he? What a gorgeous heartbreaker of a book. Dubus's compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering. That and sheer artistry makes Gone So Long dark and radiant, beautiful and never to be forgotten." - Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers
"Though the entire cast is vividly drawn, perhaps most impressive is how Dubus elicits sympathy in the reader for Danny, whose life effectively ended the moment he picked up the knife. This is a compassionate and wonderful novel." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A dark and exquisitely crafted novel that views parental relationships as both a form of inherited violence and redemptive empathy." - Library Journal, starred review
"Dubus is in his gritty wheelhouse, exploring the question of how we live with our mistakes and whether we can ever stop adding to them." - Kirkus
"Dubus evokes a dazzling palette of emotions as he skillfully unpacks the psychological tensions between remorse and guilt, fear and forgiveness, anger and love. Susan, Daniel, and Lois are fully realized and authentic characters who live with pain and heartache while struggling to fill the tremendous void created by the tragedy. Heartrending yet unsentimental, this powerful testament to the human spirit asks what it means to atone for the unforgivable and to empathize with the broken." - Booklist
This information about Gone So Long was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Marion Ettlinger
Before finding his calling as a writer, Andre Dubus III (b. Oceanside,
California) worked for brief stints
as a bounty hunter, private investigator, carpenter, bartender, actor, and
teacher. His first book, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, was published
in 1989, followed in 1993 by his first novel, Bluesman.
For the next few
years, he taught and did odd jobs as a carpenter while working on House of
Sand and Fog (a National Book Award finalist in 1999 and 2003 movie). Much of the book was written in his car, which he often parked
at a local cemetery in search of quiet and solitude. His characters were
inspired by two people whose predicaments had stuck in his mind for years: a
woman he read about in the newspaper who was wrongly evicted from her house and
forced to live in ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Andre Dubus III's Website
Name Pronunciation
Andre Dubus III: ahn-dray duh-BYOOSE (last syllable rhymes with use)
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I write to add to the beauty that now belongs to me
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