Wives & Lovers: Three Short Novels – Literary Fiction About the Unadorned Core of Love

by Richard Bausch

“A first-rate collection of novellas that will break your heart and fill you with hope at the same time.” —Denver Rocky Mountain News In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes Wives and Lovers , from the author the Boston Globe calls “One of the most expert and substantial of our writers.” Requisite Kindness —published here for the first time—tells the story of a man who must comes to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. Rare and Endangered Species demonstrates how a wife and mother’s suicide reverberates in the small community where she lives, and affects the lives of people who don’t even know her. Finally, Spirits is about the pain that men and women can—and do—inflict upon each other. Three very different stories that illuminate the unadorned core of love—not the showy, more celebrated sort, but what remains when the more ephemeral emotions such as lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Book Club

223 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman's Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.

Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.

He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California

Reviews

[Cardee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is there anyone else who can write dialogue as tight as Bausch? If there is, I haven't yet found her or him. Bausch is one of those author's I not only enjoy reading, but also a writer who teaches me things. Things about dialogue.

And karate.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a case of a good writer I happen not to like if not a collection I happen not to like from a writer I might. Because Bausch isn't all that dissimilar from writers I do like. Here, anyway. But these three short novels didn't really work for me. For one thing, his men & women are too and too frequently/constantly mean to each other, which is okay, though it gets a bit monotonous. The final novella was the most engaging, and it was in first person, which makes me wonder. It was also the only one of the three which didn't switch perspectives per section, and this worked to its advantage. The middle novella had that it-all-fits-together sort of Magnolia/Short Cuts feel to it, and not really in an uncontrived way. Indeed a lot of this felt written, just slightly less than real. The final novella had a sort of New York Trilogy feel, with a bit of mystery woven in, though I didn't need this. The first seemed to end before it really started. Anyway, I'll certainly read more Bausch, but this wasn't great. I also don't understand who the characters on the cover are. Why's that girl so young and alterna?

[Rebekah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh! These are the worst stories I've read since being forced to do peer-critiques in middle school. And the guy has such great credentials! The characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is wooden, the writing style is boring, the stories don't go anywhere, and the "morals" are complete tripe. I started speedreading halfway through the first story because I just couldn't take it anymore. Further proof of how in this day and age, as long as the right people with equally garbage aesthetic opinions love and laud your book, the public will buy it and you're set to keep publishing the same junk for the rest of your life.

[Robert]

I have known about Richard Bausch for a long time, but this is the first time I've read his work. These three so-called short novels (two are novellas, the other a short story) are full of characters in crisis, very well rendered. They focus on death, suicide, infidelity, insecurity, and alcohol's negative impact on one's behavior towards other. In other words, these are grim tales about people face-to-face with their demons and betrayers.

The oddly redeeming dimension of these pieces is the somewhat hopeful and not very dramatic suburban middle-class setting in which they play out. A certain rugged normalcy blunts the edges of despair with the exception of the suicide. People have their inadequacies but they also have their reasons. Sometimes, as in the last story, they manage to do more than survive.

Bausch is not an especially gifted stylist with the exception of dialogue, at which he is almost perfect. He's not clumsy or awkward but he is rather pedestrian in fashioning his sentences; professional but workman-like. The center of action is a place in the Blue Ridge country of Virginia that he calls Port Royal. I assume he's talking about Front Royal, about 70 miles west of D.C. I have hiked and camped all over that region, so I may have filled in some of Bausch's gaps as I read. Another reader might not understand that his Port Royal isn't a thin sort of place.

The pieces here were written decades ago, just as Bausch was beginning to gain recognition. I will read more of his work to see how it has evolved.

[John Vanderslice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting collection for the publisher to have put together. Two previously published novellas--Rare and Endangered Species and Spirits (the title stories of two of his earlier collections)--and one unpublished novella (Requisite Kindness). What I find fascinating is the synergy between the three novellas, even though they were written decades apart. Spirits dates from the mid-1980s. Rare and Endangered Species from the mid-1990s, and, based on the publication date of this volume, Requisite Kindness from the early 2000s. All three novellas cut a fine line between marital conflicts and marital satisfactions, with the additional weight of obligations to, and the sometimes painful love for, one's parents. All three are finally positive pieces in their emotional heft but by no means can one call them sentimental. I would say, in fact, that they offer a clear-eyed--and strong-hearted--depiction of what it is like to commit to another person for a lifetime. Not surprisingly given the range of dates in which the novellas were written, but some characters are very much young adults, suffering through all the uncertainties that young adults do, others are in cranky middle-aged, and some are the dying elderly. Bausch handles each set of characters with equal grace and equal insight, also his characteristically loving writerly care. I guess this is all a long approach to say that this is a very Richard Bausch book--and in all the best ways.

[Colin Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best of the three is the center novella, 'Rare and Endangered Species', which explores the corrosive effect that a mother's sudden suicide has on her friends and family - familiar waters, but Bausch's remarkable patience and subtlety wring poignancy out of the semi-rote material. At times I had to flip back a bit to remember how certain characters related to one another, but that's more a remark about my memory than about Bausch's prose.

The serial killer/rapist stuff in the final novella was a little....odd.

Recommended. Bausch's command of the family dynamic is on full display here; the cumulative effect of his collection of shorts had more of an effect on me than these three short novels had, but they're still quite good.

[Kevin Blackaby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capable writer. Unsatisfactory story lines. I saw Bausch at the SoLit Festival last June and thought I would try reading him. I chose this book which contains three short stories. I plodded thru the first two. Enjoyed the third, but it seemed too short for some reason. His insights on love and marriage read like tragedies, which I tend to label most southern fiction with. The characters always wrestling with some inner secrets seem to be the only way to relate to what it means to be human. I may read Bausch again, but not anytime soon.

[Arnie Kahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book is very misleading, as well as the one-sentence summaries on the back cover. A better title might have been “Couples” or “Families”. This is called 3 short novels but they’re really 2 long stories and a novella. Regardless, I loved reading them. Bausch is a master of writing dialog, especially between married couples who are having a little conflict. I look forward to reading his “Selected Stories” that is on my bookshelf.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Bausch is an excellent writer and a master of the short story, and I'm amazed his work is not more well known. I liked this a lot. Maybe it is too dark for some, but the death of one's mother is a universal experience. And surprisingly, for an older book, the third novel anticipates the MeToo movement, making it a timely read.

[Amy Brack · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Peggy brought this for me to borrow when we met for dinner a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the lyrical writing style, and also reading short stories again, it's been a while!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? I always enjoy Richard Bausch and this collection of three short novels is no exception. Another pleasent, enjoyable and insightful read. Thank you Richard Bausch.

[dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for class, it was long.

[Allison Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must admit I didn't even read the first novella. I made it about 30 pages in before the age discrepancies got the best of me. Brian, the main character, is forty when his ninety-four year old grandmother dies. In a flashback a few pages in, thirty-year-old Brian is having a conversation with his seventy-four year old grandmother. There were other age discrepancies with Brian's father and aunt in relation to the grandmother. It might seem like a nit-picky point, but why was age even such an issue in this story? If it wasn't brought up so much, I could have let it go. But there were at least four or five instances of this. If I can do the simple math and figure out what is correct, why couldn't the author, his agent or editor? On top of that, there were too many character names, and the story didn't hook me right away, so I skipped to the second novella.

I liked how "Rare & Endangered Species" had a section from every main (and a few minor!) characters' points of view. It made the whole story seem fuller to have many different outlooks. Starting with an older woman, Andrea, who commits suicide, then peeking into the lives of her husband, son and daughter and their spouses, a casual acquaintance and her daughter. The style seemed a bit stuffy and formal, but it was interesting to read until the end. I thought that everything built towards a much bigger ending than we were given. The story itself was entertaining, but the payoff wasn't enough to have it resonate with me overall.

"Spirits" had me hooked from the start. I thought the characters were the most realistic of the book. While there is the ever-present anger and betrayal between husbands and wives as is typical of Bausch's work, it seemed a little less harsh, which made it easier to believe. A man has taken a new teaching position at a small college where one of his idols works. He gets to know the idol, but not in the usual way you might think. While there are external relationships in this story, and major plot points, I think the most interesting of it all was how we think and what we do when we're alone.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three short novels together in one book.The first one is about a man whose mother has died. The family is coming together to have a funeral.The second one I could not get interested in and did not finish. The third one is the best of the three. It is about a new professor. He moves to a new job at a small university. A famous elderly professor offers him a place to stay at his house while he is out of town. The young one ends up getting entangled is the older man's life in unexpected ways. He is having problems with his wife who is reluctant to follow him from the big city university in the midwest. While this is going on his landlady from the place he is staying at discovers that her ex-husband is a serial killer of young girls. The guy is trying to deal with all of this while holding down his first real job.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best of the three is the center novella, 'Rare and Endangered Species', which explores the corrosive effect that a mother's sudden suicide has on her friends and family - familiar waters, but Bausch's remarkable patience and subtlety wring poignancy out of the semi-rote material. At times I had to flip back a bit to remember how certain characters related to one another, but that's more a remark about my memory than about Bausch's prose.

The serial killer/rapist stuff in the final novella was a little....odd.

Recommended. Bausch's command of the family dynamic is on full display here; the cumulative effect of his collection of shorts had more of an effect on me than these three short novels had, but they're still quite good.

[Tyler McGaughey · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's this year's Mackey Chair, so I felt obligated to have read something he's written.

This could be because I was able to devote more time to reading the second half of the book than the first, but I felt like this book improved the further in I got. I still do think that the opening story is the least impressive. A little too bleak for bleak's sake. 'Spirits,' the final story, tries to do a few too many things and doesn't quite develop everything, but it was still fine reading. My favorite piece here was the middle "novel," 'Rare and Endangered Species,' in which Bausch creates a stunning mosaic of connected characters that plays like a miniature Robert Altman movie.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of novels was sobering and themes were unsettling the way I think it is supposed to be. I didn't think it was great but I did appreciate it. Stories were slow-paced and loaded with dialogue but not in a boring way. I think my favorite novel was the last one because, in my opinion, it ended the best and it had the most interesting premise. If there was anything that turned me off about this collection, it would be the recurring rudeness and over-sensitivity of characters (Maybe least in the last novel). It just carried on through the three novels and can become tiring. But all in all, it was an alright, rainy day read.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually only read one of the three novellas in this book, which was chosen by my face-to-face bookgroup for discussion. The novella, "Rare and Endangered Species," was about the impact on a family and a community of a decision by the mother of that family. It is skillfully written in minimalist style, reminiscent of the short stories of Raymond Carver. It also reminded me the work of Andre Dubus. All three are very masculine writers who write about the intimate, personal realm often consigned to women. Their work is forceful and their perspective interesting.

[Mary Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of these three novellas, "Rare and Endangered Species" really blew me away. What Bausch manages to accomplish in 100 pages is truly astounding. Tight and haunting like a short story (that only Bausch could write), with the scope of an epic novel. Highly recommend the book for that novella alone. I enjoyed the other two as well, but "Rare and Endangered Species" will haunt me for a very long time.

[Toby Beeny · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was rather like reality television: no plot and mediocre characters. I bore of the current anti-hero, anti-plot fad. Everyone in the stories had a major grief with someone else, but the author rarely developed or resolved it. As each story ends, you are left with the dirty feeling of voyeurism, and it isn't very pleasant. The stories seem to drift around and then end abruptly. Personally, I'll take an Achilles over the modern protagonist with no goals.

[AdultFiction Teton County Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teton County Library Call No: F BAUSCH
Marisa's rating: 3 stars

This collection of three short novels definitely kept my attention. The middle story "Rare & Endangered Species" was especially captivating as a small town dealt with the suicide of a apparently normal housewife. I loved the plot's dark and unexpected turns. I also enjoyed Bauch's narration, allowing the story to be told both forward and backward in time, but also by major and minor characters.

[Emma Alice Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intricate And Emotionally Crushing

Spirits, the last of the three short novels collected here, is the highlight. It takes the same intricate understanding of human relationships and the sadness they generate found in the preceding stories and wraps it around a combination of events that, in other hands, would be absurd. If you are a writer, Bausch's use of dialogue will make you feel like an idiot as you fight back the tears these stories are likely to produce.

[Leesteffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

started off slow and over written craft-wise. . . Picks up and is getting better. . . gets slow again. . . Theme-wise, I found the book somewhat depressing. . . Narrator's views of women and relationship seemed very skewed and negative. I gave it three stars bc it is technically well crafted, rather than bc of the story.

[Marisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of three short novels definitely kept my attention. The middle story "Rare & Endangered Species" was especially captivating as a small town dealt with the suicide of a apparently normal housewife. I loved the plot's dark and unexpected turns. I also enjoyed Bauch's narration, allowing the story to be told both forward and backward in time, but also by major and minor characters.

[John Pappas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Spirits" is the highlight of this collection...Bausch is better suited to shorter works than the novella or longer form short stories found in Wives and Lovers. His collected short stories is unbeatable.

[Ann M]

The first novella turned me off, I may not finish the book. Characters' ages were very confusing, unnecessarily so, and the women were stereotypes. I like his stories, but his longer work, not so much.

[Margaret]

Story "Letter to the Woman of the House" read on This American Life. So touching, reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine.
sounds perfect for the hopelessly romantic ecosquirrel

[Linda Bonnin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bausch is a wonderful storyteller, a master at his craft. He is also a great teacher, one that I learned much from in a short time.

[Carol Wagers]

excellent writer

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

two out of three are pretty good -- refused to finish the third one.