SOURCE: "Master of Moments," in The New Republic, Vol. 200, No. 6, February 6, 1989, pp. 41-2.

Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and critic. In the following review of Selected Stories, she characterizes the collection as "deeply rewarding" and Dubus as a writer who assumes moral responsibility for his characters.

A woman and her grown son are sitting after hours in the restaurant where she works, discussing the son's unhappiness. The woman says, "You know why I like my waitress friends so much? And what I've learned from them? They don't have delusions. So when I'm alone at night … I look out my window, and it comes to me: we don't have to live great lives, we just have to understand and survive the ones we've got."

A man struggling along on his own after his wife has left him reflects, "It is not hard to live through a...