Dubin’s Lives by Bernard Malamud lands on the shelves of my shop, where it will be found in my Fiction Author: M section.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1979, (First Edition) Hardback in dust wrapper.
From the cover: Dubins Lives is a moving, affecting story of love and marriage, undoubtedly Bernard Malamuds richest and most subtle work.
William Dubin, prize-winning biographer of H. D. Thoreau, is the steadfast, somewhat comic hero. Dubin learns from lives, or believes that he does: those he writes, those he shares, the life he himself leads. In his late middle age, seeking youth, greater accomplishment, adventure, his secret self, he meets Fanny Bick, a young woman at least half his age. The obsession of biography is quickly supplanted by the obsession of love. He suffers, loses his bearings. His sensible, lovely wife, Kitty, gets short shrift. He is unable to placate his grown children, as he carries on an affair with Fanny that is at once funny and touching.
As Dubin, a demon for discipline, runs, walks, diets even tries to read his way back to the productive creative life he is struggling to finish a major work, The Passion of D. H, Lawrence. Change redemption? eludes him until he is driven to tempt fate in unpredictable ways.
In the Collected Works of Bernard Malamud series.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Unlaminated dust wrapper a little edgeworn and faded with slight fraying to the head of the spine. Top edge of the text block spotted. Text complete, clean and tight.
Blue boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. 361 pages. 9¼” x 6¼”.
BookLovers of Bath 