SOURCE: "Some August Fiction," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, Winter, 1983–84, pp. 742-54.

Pritchard is an American author and critic. In the following excerpt, he calls Dubus's portrayal of the everyday lives and secret agonies of ordinary people perceptive and realistic.

As for Andre Dubus, whose fourth collection of short fiction [The Times Are Never So Bad] earns him the title of seasoned veteran, one would not wish him to be at all other than he is. Which is also to say that he has not "developed" from the best work of his first collection, Separate Flights, of eight years ago. That book, like Dubus's subsequent collections, opened and/or closed with the stories that constitute his best work: "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Separate Flights," from the first book; "Adultery," from Adultery and Other Choices; "Finding a Girl in America," the title story of his...