Adultery & Other Choices

Book excerpt: This “haunting and subtle” collection of short stories offers a compassionate portrayal of man’s journey from childhood to maturity (Publishers Weekly). For the adolescents in Part One of Andre Dubus’s Adultery & Other Choices, youth is characterized by humiliation, alienation, and disappointment: A son struggles to connect with his distant father, and later he must overcome a schoolyard bully. Then, for the soldiers that inhabit Part Two, service is synonymous with sacrifice, as marriages and limbs falter and fail. But for the bitterly lonely wife of a promiscuous professor, a hopeless affair with a dying ex-priest provides her with the strength necessary to retake control of her life. In the aptly titled follow-up to Separate Flights, Dubus expertly traces the arc of human life, and honors the men and women he portrays with such faithful veracity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.