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GONE SO LONG

André Dubus

Andre Dubus III's first novel in a decade is a masterpiece of thrilling tension and heartrending empathy.

For as long as she can remember, Susan Dunn has been trying to escape. But peace and happiness have always eluded her - now an adjunct professor, she is tortured by the novel she cannot finish, and a lack of feeling toward a husband who loves her. Just when she's ready to abandon everything to try again, she receives a letter that forces her to reckon with the trauma that first sent her running: her mother's murder at the hands of her father, Daniel Ahearn, forty years ago. Daniel, out of prison and living a spartan life, has written Susan with his dying wish: to see her for the first time since a policeman tore her from his arms. But does she want to see him, and confront the reason he's been gone so long? What could Daniel possibly offer the daughter he robbed of a family? As the story moves toward a possible reunion, it pulses with emotion, probing the limits of our capacity to forgive. Like Dubus's award-winning Townie and House of Sand and Fog, Gone So Long is a profound exploration of the struggle between our best intentions and most mercurial desires. Andre Dubus III is the author of six acclaimed books, including the House of Sand and Fog, a #1 New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award, and Townie, a memoir. He lives with his family in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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Book Published 2018-10-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

GONE SO LONG is an astonishment. I love this book so much, the HUMANITY in it. I love every single person in it, they are so real, these people -- I know them and love them all. I wept for them, I did. Dubus is just so good and real and true, he doesn't pull one sentimental punch the whole time, extraordinary. I thought about those people as I was walking down the sidewalk, and they are inside me as well, not just thoughts that go by. I love this book to pieces.

Andre Dubus III confronts the long shadow of violence and trauma in Gone So Long Read more...

Gone So Long is listed on Vogue Magazine/October issue/17 Books You Won't Want to Miss This Fall Read more...

A dark and exquisitely crafted novel that views parental relationships as both a form of inherited violence and redemptive empathy.

French: Actes Sud ; Italian: Feltrinelli

When you open the pages of Gone So Long, you surrender to writing of extraordinary precision and depth. It is a book that lovers of the written word will embrace, as too those seeking a compelling story.... Dubus paces his narrative masterfully, revealing each protagonist's back story as the novel crests to its tense conclusion. Most stunning is Dubus' skill in drawing the personalities of his characters with an empathetic incisiveness that reveals their vulnerabilities in prose, at once, raw and beautiful. A smart book that will appeal to (and deserves) a great many readers.

Well, he's done it again, hasn't he? What a gorgeous heartbreaker of a book. Dubus's compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering. That and sheer artistry makes Gone So Long dark and radiant, beautiful and never to be forgotten.

Rings with authenticity and evokes the texture of working-class lives. . . . This is a compassionate and wonderful novel.

I tore through this haunting novel about people driven by pain beyond the reach of love and forgiveness, and the roads they use as they seek their way back. It hits just the right note at the end, and I'll be thinking about Susan a long time. A hell of a read.

Dubus evokes a dazzling palette of emotions as he skillfully unpacks the psychological tensions between remorse and guilt, fear and forgiveness, anger and love. Susan, Daniel, and Lois are fully realized and authentic characters who live with pain and heartache while struggling to fill the tremendous void created by the tragedy. Heartrending yet unsentimental, this powerful testament to the human spirit asks what it means to atone for the unforgivable and to empathize with the broken.

Dubus is in his gritty wheelhouse, exploring the question of how we live with our mistakes and whether we can ever stop adding to them.