For as long as she can remember, Susan Dunn has been trying to escape. But peace and happiness have always eluded her–now an adjunct professor, she is tortured by the novel she cannot finish, and a lack of feeling toward a husband who loves her. Just when she’s ready to abandon everything to try again, she receives a letter that forces her to reckon with the trauma that first sent her running: … running: her mother’s murder at the hands of her father, Daniel Ahearn, forty years ago.
Daniel, out of prison and living a spartan life, has written Susan with his dying wish: to see her for the first time since a policeman tore her from his arms. But does she want to see him, and confront the reason he’s been gone so long? What could Daniel possibly offer the daughter he robbed of a family? As the story moves toward a possible reunion, it pulses with emotion, probing the limits of our capacity to forgive. Like Dubus’s award-winning Townie and House of Sand and Fog, Gone So Long is a profound exploration of the struggle between our best intentions and most mercurial desires.
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Gone So Long is an astonishment. I love this book so much, the humanity in it. I love every single person in it, they are so real, these people―I know them and love them all. I wept for them, I did. Dubus is just so good and real and true, he doesn’t pull one sentimental punch the whole time―extraordinary. I thought about those people as I was walking down the sidewalk, and they are inside me as well, not just thoughts that go by. I love this book to pieces.
I went into this book with the knowledge that this would not be a light read. Having read ‘House of Sand and Fog” years ago I know how detailed Mr. Dubuis novels can be. I can also understand why this book took so long to write, it is as if the author was living inside each of these characters heads. There is a lot of detail including a novel being written by one of the characters, almost a book within a book.
This story is told from three points of view, Daniel, Susan and her grandmother Lois.
Daniel is now a man who knows he probably doesn’t have long to live. The last time he saw his only daughter, whom he recalls fondly as his “Suzy Woo Woo” was more than 40 years ago. He was incarcerated for killing her mother, Linda, in a rage of jealousy. He has had to live with this torment his entire life, through the 15 years of his incarceration and now into his 60’s. He knows that he really has no right to see her again but he yearns to explain himself to her, that he is no longer that young “Danny” that killed Linda and how he has continued to punish himself all of the while still loving her. He has a rather successful job repairing antique furniture and has set aside a bit of money, he wants to see her one last time and leave her all that he has. He writes a long letter to Susan and tracks down her address at the college where she teaches English. He then sets off to see her before waiting for a response.
Susan was only 3 years old but she was present when her mother was killed. She had many volatiles years while living and being brought up by her grandmother. Now in her 40’s she is married but still not sure if she really loves Bobby, the only man who has ever really known her and her family history. She decides to take some time to revisit and stay with her grandmother while attempting to finish a novel that she has been working on for quite some time. Her husband is always behind her and understands and supports her reasons for leaving for a time. Susan and Lois had been doing well living together for weeks until Bobby brings her the letter written by her father. She is beside herself with the idea of seeing him and wants no part of it, yet there is a small part of her that still remember some of their short years together. She really doesn’t know what to do.
Lois, Susan’s grandmother, is one of the most interesting characters I’ve come across in a long time. She raised Susan with a strict hand, never forgetting what happened to her daughter Linda and at such a young age. She was determined that the same would not be the story for Susan. She was successful and Susan went on to graduate from college and become a professor. Susan now, however, is struggling and is coming to see her and stay while she works on her book. This 40’s age Susan is a totally different person from the young woman who fled to college and then only visited infrequently the years following. They are enjoying each other’s company. Lois owns an antique store in Florida and has done quite well for herself. She is often brash, quick to anger and speaks her mind, but has a soft spot when it comes to her granddaughter. All is going well until Susan tells her about the letter from her father. Lois is furious.She tries to forbid Susan from seeing him, even threatening to kill him if she finds him.
As these three characters evolve we really get to know them with all of their flaws but believable story lines. This is a slow moving book that you will have to have patience with but it is well worth reading. The ending is a believable one and in many ways hopeful. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great fiction.
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.
I tore through this haunting novel about people driven by pain beyond the reach of love and forgiveness, and the roads they use as they seek their way back. It hits just the right note at the end, and I’ll be thinking about Susan a long time. A hell of a read.
Excellent!
Page-turning, gorgeously written important novel, a masterpiece.
Quite a bit on the dark side, but there is redemption for all who try.
I was looking forward to this book because the author’s “House of Sand and Fog” was absolutely one of my favorite page-turner books ever. However, this book just didn’t quite do it for me. It was OK, but nothing like Sand and Fog. The characters just didn’t jump out at me, and the ending was disappointing. Just OK.
I’m not brave enough or talented enough to read the audio version of one of my own books, but my hat goes off to those authors who are. Some time ago I concluded that John Le Carre was by far the best book reader I had ever had the pleasure of listening to (fabulous gift for accents). That said, Andre Dubus is excellent, and brings a necessary and nuanced sensitivity to his tragic story of loss and a search for redemption (of sorts). This is a sad book but Dubus’ insight, language and dialogue are as amazing as they are spot on.
Great local characters
This is a very interesting book and keeps you so involved that you just can’t put it down. I have never read this author before but I am sure I will read his books again! Thank you Andre!
Well, he’s done it again, hasn’t he? What a gorgeous heartbreaker of a book. Dubus’s compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering. That and sheer artistry makes Gone So Long dark and radiant, beautiful and never to be forgotten.