Dirty Love Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00EHTF08C | Format: PDF
Dirty Love Description
In this heartbreakingly beautiful book of disillusioned intimacy and persistent yearning, beloved and celebrated author Andre Dubus III explores the bottomless needs and stubborn weaknesses of people seeking gratification in food and sex, work and love.
In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty" - tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after 25 years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she's met surfing the Web.
Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 10 hours and 51 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: October 7, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00EHTF08C
Andre Dubus III has delivered an uncompromising book of short stories, though the title story is more like a novella. They are about hope and disillusion along with the human condition of wanting what is often out of reach.
'Listen Carefully as Our Options Have Changed' is about a man who finds out that his wife of almost 25 years has been cheating on him. She has been having an affair and is in love with her lover. It appears that all the husband's ideas about the quality of his marriage go up in smoke, at least from his wife's perspective.
'Marla' has always been a lonely, overweight girl. She's grown up to be a lonely, overweight woman who works as a teller in a bank. When she meets Dennis she is 29 years old and still a virgin. She is hopeful about their relationship but ends up feeling just as lonely and alone with him as she had felt prior to meeting him.
In 'The Bartender', Robert Doucette is a bartender and a would-be poet who marries Althea who is pregnant. He has been unable to follow through on anything in his life and commences to be unfaithful to Althea early on in their marriage.
Devon is the protagonist of 'Dirty Love'. She has come to live with her great-uncle Francis after having pictures of herself in a compromising position posted on the internet. She is trying to start anew. "She'd come to live with Francis to start clean. But how can anyone ever be clean with family? Blood is too dirty, dirty with love that can so easily turn to hate." She has also met, through Skype, a veteran soldier with whom she is having a relationship. When her father comes to visit Francis and tells him about Devon's past, her world is shattered.
In this collection of four unsettling, gripping stories, the author makes pretty clear that human weaknesses, the absence of communications, unmet or unrealistic expectations, etc can make marriages extremely difficult to maintain. Of course, none of this is seen initially, but these shortcomings inevitably work to erode many marriages. In addition, in the title story, “Dirty Love,” the widespread use of smartphones by teenagers is examined, especially the reckless sending of private, compromising information.
In one story, a fifty-something software project manager comes to find out that his wife of twenty-five years is paying special attention to him because she is having an affair. In another, a girl nearing thirty is bowled over by a very attentive man, only to discover that his perfectionist tendencies prevent her from feeling free to be herself. In a third story, a bartender, who fancies himself as a poet, is mesmerized by a girl with “black eyes of hope,” who he promptly marries. Unfortunately, he permits himself to be distracted by another woman while his new wife is pregnant.
In the most transfixing story, eighteen-year-old Devon desperately asks her elderly uncle for a place to live. Raised in a dysfunctional family, she, in seeking a safe haven with a rather dubious school crowd, feels pressured into sexual experimentation. Regrettably, she falls victim to the meanness of teenagers when a video of her is posted online. Interestingly, despite the injury that she has suffered on the Internet, after moving in with her uncle, she continues to go online to meet more desirable friends/guys.
The tone of the book is not one of hopelessness. The characters exhibit a certain amount of self-awareness regarding the situations in which they find themselves.
Dirty Love Preview
Link
Please Wait...