Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dubus, Andre (Vol. 97) - Leonard Kriegel (review date 11 August 1991)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Leonard Kriegel (review date 11 August 1991)

SOURCE: "Reborn in a Wheelchair," in The New York Times Book Review, August 11, 1991, p. 9.

[In the following review, Kriegel comments on the intensity of feeling and honesty found in Dubus's collection of personal essays, Broken Vessels.]

I have never met Andre Dubus, although I think he is as good a writer of short fiction as anyone I have read over the last ten years. But after reading his first book of autobiographical essays, Broken Vessels, I think I know him. In fact, I think I know him fairly well, the way I think I know certain old friends with whom the intricate joinings of friendship have blessed both our mutual past and the language with which we share that past.

In his stories and novellas, collected in the volumes Separate Flights, Finding a Girl in America and Adultery and Other Choices, Mr. Dubus captures the contradictory demands of being an American...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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