Like Russell Banks and Raymond Carver, his contemporaries, Andre Dubus is often perceived as a "son of Ernest Hemingway," a judgment that would please neither Hemingway nor Dubus but one that serves as a rough -- often very rough -- frame of reference nonetheless. Not only does he superficially resemble Hemingway physically, being burly and bearded, but he often writes in a prose style made familiar by Hemingway -- a style that might be called nonexperimental, American plain style and which often, but not always, suggests a by-the-numbers clarity meant to impose order on chaos. But Dubus's writing can also be as verbally and syntactically complicated as that of William Faulkner. Dubus writes of guns, hunting, fishing, chaos, married life, the armed services, eating, drinking, and especially of smoking, sports, exercise, "moments of truth," and rituals of several sorts. His more or less responsible but alienated characters resemble...