Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dubus, Andre (Vol. 97) - Gilberto Perez (essay date Winter 1980–81)

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Gilberto Perez (essay date Winter 1980–81)

SOURCE: "These Days in the Holocene," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4, Winter, 1980–81, pp. 575-88.

[In the following excerpt, Perez offers a critical overview of Finding a Girl in America, suggesting that Dubus's stories provide a believable context for the dramatization of significant moral issues.]

The stories in Andre Dubus's new collection, Finding a Girl in America,… often deal with losing, and with looking again for a girl in America. In one story, set before and during the Second World War, a man from Texas has a girl in his home town who seems ideal for him, but after he joins the Marines he gets to cherish his life with the troops, keeps her waiting for years, and finally cannot bring himself to marry her; he breaks her heart but the real loss, we are left in no doubt, is his. The greater loss seems to be the woman's in another story of conflict between...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Gene Lyons (review date 26 February 1977)
   2. Anatole Broyard (review date 20 November 1977)
   3. Gilberto Perez (essay date Winter 1980–81)
   4. William H. Pritchard (essay date Winter 1983–84)
   5. Andre Dubus with Thomas Kennedy (interview date ca. 1985)
   6. Steve Yarbrough (essay date Fall 1986)
   7. Paul Gray (review date 10 November 1986)
   8. Joseph J. Feeney (essay date 15 November 1986)
   9. Andre Dubus with Patrick H. Samway (interview date 15 November 1986)
   10. Art Seidenbaum (review date 23 November 1986)
   11. Clancy Sigal (review date 21 December 1986)
   12. Jack Sullivan (review date 11 January 1987)
   13. Ellen Lesser (review date 20 January 1987)
   14. Thomas E. Kennedy (essay date February 1987)
   15. Eva Hoffman (review date 6 November 1988)
   16. Richard Eder (review date 20 November 1988)
   17. John B. Breslin (essay date 2 December 1988)
   18. Ellen Lesser (review date 17 January 1989)
   19. Anne Tyler (review date 6 February 1989)
   20. Freddie Baveystock (review date 6-12 April 1990)
   21. Leonard Kriegel (review date 11 August 1991)
   22. Mark Hummel (review date October-November 1991)
   23. David Toolan (review date 22 November 1991)
   24. Publishers Weekly (review date 1 January 1996)
   25. Doris Lynch (review date 15 February 1996)
   26. Richard Bausch (review date 25 February 1996)
   27. Mark Shechner (review date 10 March 1996)
   28. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 14 March 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright