Customer Reviews

Wives & Lovers: Three Short Novels

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I didn't like it as much as some of his previous work but it's still a good short novel collection. Spirits was especially entertaining with a serial killer, sex scandal and funny comments on academia. Rare and Endangered Species was marred by an episode where a character wants to leave a calf caught in a fence to get eaten alive by vultures while she whines about her own problems and the importance of kindness. Maybe it was supposed to be ironic but why doesn't anyone shoot the cow or at least call animal control?

This was a truly remarkable group of three separate and unrelated, yet equally compelling stories. Each one touched on something magical about the human spirit, all while exposing some of our deepest emotional idiosyncrasies and disconnections. In each he captures something of the wonder of human relationships, particularly marriage, with its conflict of happiness and disappointments; expectations and resignation; resolute faithfulness versus emotional wanderings.

Where some might see the stories as melancholy or depressing, I saw a certain triumph in each one. All were written with a great sense of humanity and realism, highlighting ordinariness, even mundaneness, within multi-dimensional characters who are fully human yet beautiful in their failures and inconsistencies. A great collection and a very worthwhile read.

this book is wonderful. It was given to me for my birthday and i read it soon after. I was unable to put it down and deeply moved by it. People should read this book (and other books by this author)and then tell everyone they know about them. Subtle in it's drama and global in it's love and understanding of how people feel!

This is one of those books that you simply must read! So good!