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Dear Husband (short story collection)

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Find sources: "Dear Husband" short story collection – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

First edition (publ. Ecco)

Dear Husband is a collection of 14 fictional short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 2009 by Ecco Press.

Description

The book is made up of a collection of 14 stories, all of which have been previously published. The book is broken up into two parts.

Stories

Part 1

  • Panic - Originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review. A family deals with their reactions to a potentially deadly situation.
  • Special - Originally published in Boulevard. Details a girl growing up with an older autistic sister who has disfigured her.
  • The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters - Originally published in Fiction (magazine). A grown woman struggles to deal with her aged father and the knowledge that he is a murderer.
  • Magada Maria - Originally published in Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. A story of a woman's slow downward spiral over the years, told from her last boyfriend's point of view.
  • A Princeton Idyll - Originally published in The Yale Review. Story told in a series of letters between a woman and a housekeeper regarding the woman's grandfathers death and dissolution of the family.
  • Cutty Sark - Originally published in Salmagundi (magazine). A man deals with the pressure of having a famous incestuous mother.
  • Landfill - Originally published in The New Yorker. Murder mystery centered on a young man's death at a fraternity house.
  • Vigilante - Originally published in Boulevard. Home from college the protagonist struggles with drug addiction and an abusive father.
  • The Heart Sutra - Originally published in American Short Fiction. Two famous poets deal with separation from each other in vastly different fashion.

Part 2

  • Dear Joyce Carol - Originally published in Boulevard. A series of, fictional, letters written to the author by a stalker.
  • Suicide by Fitness Center - Originally published in Harper's Magazine. Depressed a woman attempts suicide at a fitness center.
  • The Glazers - Originally published in American Short Fiction. Meeting the family of her boyfriend a woman discovers a dark secret.
  • Mistrial - Originally published in Storie. Retired librarian is on a jury, but has a secret motive.
  • Dear Husband - Originally Published in Conjunctions. The titular story of the collection. A short final letter from a wife to her husband.

References

  1. Oates, Joyce Carol. Dear Husband. p. title page.
  2. NY Times review at The New York Times
  3. Oates, Joyce Carol. Dear Husband.
Works by Joyce Carol Oates
The Wonderland Quartet
The Gothic Saga
Other novels
Novellas
Short story collections
Short stories
Young adult fiction


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