SOURCE: "Harshness to Poetry, Poetry to Revelation," in Commonweal, Vol. CXVIII, No. 20, November 22, 1991, pp. 696-97.

In the following review, Toolan discusses Dubus's ability to turn poetry into revelation in Broken Vessels.

Writers have their own set of moral commandments to add to the classic ten. "I can't write about any place I haven't smelled," admits Andre Dubus. On the night of July 23, 1986, that imperative had drawn him from his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, to a seedy section of Boston to do research for a story he was writing about a prostitute. On his way home late that night, on a four-lane segment of I-93 North, Dubus stopped to assist Luz Santiago and her brother Luis, whose car had collided with a motorcycle abandoned in the third lane. (The cyclist, drunk, had fallen off his bike, and fearing arrest, had wandered off.) Moments later...