The Times Are Never So Bad - Softcover

6 1-hour cassettes

The Pretty Girl . . . may be the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction (Dubus) has written. --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

For the lyricism and directness of his language, the richness and precision of his observation, he is among the best short-story writers in America. --Judith Levine, The Village Voice

Mr Dubus is a shrewd student of people who come to accept pain as a fair price for pleasure, and to view right and wrong as a matter of degree; without moralizing, he suggests that their self-inflicted punishments are often worse that what a just court, or a just God, would decree. --John Updike, The New Yorker

"It is a world of secrets," says the narrator of 'A Father's Story.' Andre Dubus's fine new collection is made of those secrets, observed with an art that is luminous with honesty and generosity. Dubus is interested in essential things in the shadowy powers that circle our lives and the slender resources of faith and love with which we try to keep them at bay. --Tobias Wolff

Mr Dubus is a shrewd student of people who come to accept pain as a fair price for pleasure, and to view right and wrong as a matter of degree; without moralizing, he suggests that their self-inflicted punishments are often worse that what a just court, or a just God, would decree. --John Updike, The New Yorker