- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; New title edition (23 Sep 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060571837
- ISBN-13: 978-0060571832
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.4 x 1.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 138,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Wives & Lovers
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Short-story master Bausch (Someone to Watch Over Me, 1999, etc.) probes the tensions that seethe in families and marriages in three novellas, one previously unpublished. "Requisite Kindness," the new work, seems at first to cover the familiar territory of men who screw up and women who are tired of picking up after them, which is interesting enough, especially since Bausch's dialogue and character insights are as cogent as ever. But the tale deepens as it moves into the head of a man tending his dying mother, exploring his fears and regrets over a failed marriage and damaged children. The mother's passing is treated with a sad tenderness quite different from the cold finality of a suicide that drives the narrative in "Rare & Endangered Species," deservedly well-known as the title piece in a 1994 collection. As Bausch explores the fraught lives of Andrea Brewer's husband, children, and various people more loosely linked to her suicide, we see couples trying to reach each other across an abyss of guilt, anger, and shame: when one husband tries to stop an argument by saying "I love you," his wife snaps, "You use that like a club." Yet the tale expresses hope too, especially in its closing with the birth of the granddaughter Andrea will never see. "Spirits," from a 1987 collection by the same title, also swerves to a cautiously happy ending after delving into a young English professor's thoroughly nasty experiences while apartment-sitting for an older faculty member with a weakness for drink and vulnerable young women. At the same time, the young man's former landlady is fundamentally unnerved by the discovery, all over the local TV news, that her ex-husband is a serial killer of little girls. "You think you understand a man's spirit when you look in his eyes and he's your live-in partner for three years," she shudders-but she didn't, and in Bausch's world most people are strangers even to those they love best. A bleak vision, tempered by sensitive affection for human beings in all their frailty. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
"Wives & Lovers" is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the "Boston Globe" calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers." "Requisite Kindness" -- published here for the first time -- tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. "Rare & Endangered Species" demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, "Spirits" is about the pain that men and women can -- and do -- inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love -- not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.
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The afternoon bus from Newport News was twenty minutes late, and the first five people who got off were Navy men. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The afternoon bus from Newport News was twenty minutes late, and the first five people who got off were Navy men. Read the first page
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8 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Breathtaking
21 July 2004
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This collection of novellas is breathtaking. No other living author today writes with such beauty about the silences and yearning between individuals and those they love, hate, and forever long for. Bausch carefully crafts the pulse points of pain in each of his characters as they strive for even the thinnest threads of hope and redemption. What makes Bausch such a courageous writer is his willingness to risk tenderness in his stories. These aren't cynical diatribes on the futility of postmodern man--these are flesh and blood characters, yourself and people you know, who struggle each day for a glimpse of kindness and generosity, even though they may have failed a dozen times. After reading this collection, you feel your soul shimmer just a little bit brighter, because love, however flawed, is still possible.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
the many states of marriage
11 Jan 2005
Format:Paperback
My experience is that even a very good marriage fluctuates through many states, some of them not very positive. In so far as the three different novellas which comprise "Wives & Lovers" are about any one thing, it is that experience. The longest of the 3 novellas, "Rare & Endangered Species", is by far the most satisfying. Bausch does not have anything novel or brilliant or terribly witty to say, and his characters are not novel or brilliant or terribly witty, but Bausch makes fine art out of the ordinary. In "Rare and Endangered Species", Bausch expands the cast of characters beyond the families of immediate interest. He achieves some of the effect of those novels which depict the intertwining lives of a small town, and it certainly makes for good reading, but it does not seem quite developed. In shorter works I sometimes am too aware of the author at work, the characters do not take over the writing, and I felt this way about the two other novellas. The construction of the first novella is interesting: it climaxes, quietly, with an event (the grandmother's death) that occurs in the middle of the few weeks depicted. In the third novella, the motel owner, a totally ordinary women whose ex-husband turns out to be a serial killer, is the one character who is sympathetic.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A wonderful study of human emotions...
10 Nov 2004
Format:Paperback
Rarely do I ever rate books 5 stars, but I simply had to in the case of this book. The novellas are wonderfully composed. Bausch manages to weave very detailed stories in what is seemingly a brief and fleeting moment in the characters lives. The expressive use of emotions was quite overpowering. For the most part these were real situations that people encounter: the death of a parent, the birth of a child, alcoholism, suicide, media frenzy, etc... Even if you yourself had not actually experienced these life events, chances are you know someone who has (except probably the serial killer situation but I found that to be more about society's fascination with the macabre). Artfully and intuitively written, this book is well worth the read.
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