The Cage Keeper and Other Stories

by Andre Dubus III

Passion and betrayal, violent desperation, ambivalent love that hinges on hatred, and the quest for acceptance by those who stand on the edge of society-these are the hard-hitting themes of a stunningly crafted first collection of stories by the bestselling author of House of Sand and Fog .

A vigilant young man working in a halfway house finds himself unable to defend against the rage of one of the inmates in the title story. In "White Trees, Hammer Moon," a man soon to leave home for prison finds himself as unprepared for a family camping trip in the mountains of New Hampshire as he has been for most things in his life. And in the award-winning "Forky," an ex-con is haunted by the punishment he receives just as he is being released into the world. With an incisive ability to inhabit the lives of his characters, Dubus travels deep into the heart of the elusive American dream.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Andre Dubus III is the author of The Garden of Last Days, House of Sand and Fog (a #1 New York Times bestseller, Oprah’s Book Club pick, and finalist for the National Book Award) and Townie, winner of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His writing has received many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family north of Boston.

Reviews

[Andrew Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his memoir, Townie, Dubus talks of his upbringing in tough New England towns, where he was at first bullied by other boys but eventually trained himself to become a brawler of some repute. Here, in an early compendium of short stories, he is at home portraying a collection of down at heel characters trying to come to terms with their less than perfect lives.

The stories all have violent undertones and won’t be to everyone’s taste, but there is no doubting the author’s ability to paint startling images with his words. Some feature men who have been jailed or are soon to be jailed; there is killing here and casual brutality, but there is also use of a rustic dialogue that makes each piece feel compellingly real. The men and women are either searching for something or lamenting its loss. There is longing and regret, recalled memories and wistful dreams of better times. To me, the book resonated not just with the tales themselves but the sights, sounds and even smells associated with each. I’m not sure if Dubus tells us of these things but they were definitely there, in my head.

If I have a criticism it would be the one you’d expect of any such collection: some of the stories landed better than others. But each has its merits and I’d only counsel that such is the power of these seven tales it is probably best to space them out, to take your time with this book.

I've no doubt that Dubus III suffers from the fact his father was a famous writer (and an author I’ve certainly enjoyed) in that his own work is less well known and is invariably compared with that of the senior Andre Dubus. But in my opinion, to miss out on the writings of this hugely talented man would be negligent to say the least – I think it’s amongst the best contemporary American literature out there.

[Alex English · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cage Keeper and other Stories by Andre Dubus is a colllective reading of lives that fall between the cracks. A beautiful arrangement of strange, tragic, and liberating things, Andre Dubus uses his direct, and sometimes humorous language, to tell stories no one thinks to tell. Starting with The Cage Keeper”, a worker in a halfway house is kidnapped by an inmate and friend, and forced to drive him to freedom. The second, “Duckling girl” is the touching and heart-wrenching story of a girl who escapes the abuse of her father only to find more abuse in a pair of young men. “Wolves in the Marsh” is a story of a young boy, hunting alone and his self discovery. “Forky” is a haunting story of a man struggling with life after being released from prison. “Mountains” is a story of a waitress who betrays her lover, who is a war vet dealing with PTSD. In “White Trees, Hammer Moon” a man is wildly unprepared for a family camping trip, as his mind is occupied with his looming prison sentence. And finally ending with a young man's acceptance of an ending love affair in, “The Last Dance”.
Andre Dubus uses clear, concise and to-the-point descriptions and language to tell his stories. In his story, “The Cage Keeper” his quick descriptions of the people around him and his tenderly mysterious characters paint a colorful portrait for his readers to walk around in. In “The Duckling Girl”, my heart broke for his character Lorilee. His messy descriptions made me queasy and anxious as he touches at something so sensitive for any female to read. Andre Dubus definitely has taken a liking to touching on sensitive topics, things that cause the most amount of tension for the reader and his characters; something to make you lose sleep. This is the story that affected me the most, maybe because in all his subtle language his words hit so hard. Maybe that is one of his faults, at least in my opinion; I found that this is not one of those books that I “can't put down”. In fact, in reading it I often found myself having to get up and walk away from it, finding the material too much to handle all in one sitting, but it did not fail to intrigue me.
“Forky” tore me apart with the Dubus' emotional characters. His word choice and sentence structure like, “I turned and stuck it in his face and watched him turn to butter” contributes to a haunting narration of a man released from prison. He is so casual in his descriptions that it catches me off guard as a reader. “White Trees, Hammer Moon” was another favorite of mine because it was also so rich with emotion. The main character is being sent away to prison for a year and is camping with his family before hand. This story, again, is filled with such subtle emotion from the genuine characters Dubus creates.
“The Last Dance” Was a little difficult for me to get into because I found all the dialogue to be overwhelming and difficult to read and understand. The characters weren't as relateable as I would have liked them to be. In “Mountains” I found myself hating the main character, Sally, mostly because I sympathized with Rick. I did not like what was happening and the story, beside that was really hard to get into.
All in all Andre Dubus does a remarkable job at creating genuine characters, telling lively, tragic and heart-wrenching stories, and leaving a lasting impression.

[Dylan Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread: October 2023
Honestly, I've turned around on Cage Keeper over the years. The strong stories are strong enough to hold up the collection. Of the seven stories, four worked for me ("The Cage Keeper," "Duckling Girl," "Forky," and "White Trees, Hammer Moon.") two didn't, ("Mountains" and "Last Dance") and one I could take or leave ("Wolves in the Marsh"). No, the collection isn't destined to be a classic. It's no Jesus' Son or Interpreter of Maladies. And it's probably Dubus III's weakest work. But it's still worth picking up at least once, especially knowing that it only gets better from here. 4/5


Reread: September, 2017
I cannot tell you why I decided to pick this up again, going from rereading Townie to rereading Cage Keeper, from my favorite Dubus work to my least.

When you tell a story, no matter the format, you want it to feel like the character(s) most important story. This has stuck with me in my own writing, and gets to the root of my problem with most of this collection. Five out of seven stories don't feel important. They were disposable tales that had little weight or meaning behind them. Perhaps this seems harsh, and reading it now, it is. But when I've seen Dubus do better, it just feels so damn disappointing to feel utterly disconnected for much of the time I spent with this.

That said, there are highlights. The first two stories are worth the cover price alone (The titular story was my favorite of the bunch). And Dubus' prose is always on point even when the tale feels off center. This man knows how to write a sentence that flows and leaves me in awe. He uses present tense with the quiet ease of a true master; no other working writer I've read has quite matched him. For all this I bump it up to a 3.5 but with the problems I gave before, I cannot give it a higher rating than this.


Original Review
This collection was a mixed bag for me. After loving two of Andre Dubus' books I'm left a bit wanting after finishing this. Of the seven stories I thought two were excellent, two were meh, and skipped three altogether because they didn't hold my attention. The cover is beautiful and I'll proudly display it on my shelves with the rest of my Dubus books, but overall I was disappointed and probably won't read it again.

[Connie Hess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andre Dubus III is an excellent author. His books are never very uplifting and deal with sad realities of life. This is a book of short stories and some I found to be disturbing.

[Knut André Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stark yet vivid stories of people on the margins of society. A couple of these stories feel slightly out of place, but this is up there with the best of Dubus' fiction.

[Penny Burkhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best writing and character development that I have read. The harsh conditions in each of these stories made many of them hard to read. Still that doesn't diminish their outstanding power.

[Hoyadaisy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably my fault (not a short story enthusiast), not his, (he of "House of Sand and Fog" genius). Please do consider listening to his narration, though. Voice is compelling.

[David Haugaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are mostly pretty raw, often about people who are struggling to cope with severe trauma, and how it effects people close to them. Their inner turmoil endangers their relationships. When they are miserable, the people close to them suffer as well. Some stories are thick with suspense - the situation may suddenly explode into violence or other self destructive behavior. Few characters are clearly evil - the three predators in Duckling Girl are an exception but the characters are usually not likeable. Maybe they would be if they hadn’t been damaged by their experiences in the military, or prison, or as children. Or maybe not.

I found two stories to be outstanding, “The Cage Keeper” and “White Trees, Hammer Moon.” In the first, a prison guard becomes entangled in a precarious situation with a prisoner he dislikes, and in the second, a man facing a one year prison term takes his two children on a camping trip, but he lacks the maturity needed for this adventure. These stories are very suspenseful and you really don’t know what’s going to happen.

I was uncomfortable with the long description of a woman’s degradation in “Duckling Girl” - is this really justified or necessary? - but Dubus has a point to make in a twist at the end. I liked “Wolves in the Marsh,” a relatively low key story, where a boy’s mastery of the forest provides him with some escape from his unhappiness at home. In “Forky,” an ex prisoner consumed by guilt has a one night stand; in “Mountains,” a girlfriend of a veteran with PTSD is losing her sympathy for him. I just could not get into “Last Dance” about two old ornery drunks who hunt for large turtles in a creek. They live in shacks but have tremendous pride in their turtle hunting skills. I was rooting for the turtle.

Dubus is an excellent writer, and I believe he knows his characters. I waivered between 3 and 4 stars. The bleakness of the stories bothered me. Nobody learns from their experiences, with the possible exception of the prison guard. I am feeling the need for hope these days.

[Mark Wenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading about people living on the fringes of society can be interesting but also tiresome. I see the characters in these stories making poor choices over and over again—and, although I’m definitely an empath, it’s difficult feeling sorry for people who can’t overcome their addictions and limitations. This is especially true when these decisions lead to cruelty or abuse as in several of these stories. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the complications in most of these stories with the blatant exception of “Last Dance,” the final story in the collection, which was a total bore. This collection has its moments, but it’s no House of Sand and Fog. Grade: C+

[Daniel Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1989. Collection of seven short stories. The best is Cage Keeper, in which an escaped inmate kidnaps a guard at a halfway house at knife-point. White Trees, Hammer Moon is also very good. A man, who is about to go to prison for a year, takes his two stepchildren camping in New Hampshire. Signs of the greatness to come from Dubus.

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disturbing & depressing. 7 short stories about people who had no hope or redemption.

[Irwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a fan.

[Michelle Donofrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of short stories. Each with a heavy subject matter… incarceration, alcoholism, abuse. Most oscillated between past and present with very little if any segue.

[Robin Cayce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong collection of short stories. Beautifully written with rich descriptions of place and character with an intense focus on the suffering of life and our search for beauty within that suffering.

[Christine Schiavo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't love all the stories in this collection, but "White Trees, Hammer Moon" is worth 4 stars by itself.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did the audiobook. Most stories were just ok. I do one at night before bedtime.

[Sidney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seven super depressing short stories. Just finished; now I feel blah.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

[Mollye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the title story.

[Patrick Faller · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a moment in the title story of this collection that suggests the nature of Dubus III's interests as a writer and gives a glimpse into his fiction-writing strengths. The story's narrator, a young man named Allen who works as a corrections officer, is bagging up and tagging the personal belongings of one of the inmates who has run off without warning (the corrections institution resembles a half-way house for convicted felons, hardly a jail where the inmates are under lock and key and subject to the scrutiny of the guards). The runaway, an older man referred to through the story as Elroy, was somewhat of a rabble-rouser, and has written scathing letters criticizes both the administration and its guards, and Allen, somewhat skeptical and yet admiring of Elroy's attitude, sifts through texts as varied as George Orwell's 1984 and interracial pornographic magazines with varying degrees of insult and envy. This view of Elroy extends to Elroy's bed, which Allen notes is "impeccably made," as well as the bookcase beside it, which Allen had witnessed Elroy building, "his face [unchanged] from the constant tight-jawed looked it always has." After cinching the bags and preparing to leave the room he has just wiped clean of all traces of its former occupant, Allen notices "something [he] has never noticed before": a framed photograph of Elroy, a woman, and a young boy about fifteen or sixteen years of age. Each is dressed up, and Elroy is a much younger, much happier man "squinting into the sunshine with an actual, honest-to-God smiel on his face." The photograph warrants as much of a description as the Orwell book or the porno magazine, but it shocks Allen into a new awareness that blooms as the story progresses. As he leaves the room, bound eventually for his car and an encounter with the real Elroy, who will kidnap Allen and force him to drive to Canada where Elroy will make a new start, Allen has the temerity to sum up his reaction to the photo: "I didn't think that trolls got married."

As I said before, this small moment represents the strengths of the collection as a whole. Not every one of the nine stories is perfect, but in each piece, there are moments in which Dubus slows down and zooms in on a particular gesture, a telling detail, a memory of a line of dialogue, attempting to probe the implications, to pry into the inner lives of characters whose emotions are larger written off as irrelevant, whose motives seem malicious and single-minded and easily condemnable. These are stories written in the tradition of Dubus III's father, who used fiction as the means to gain insight, to suggest, to intuit, to question the forces keeping people together, pushing them apart, the forces governing the kinds of thinking people do. These aren't always redemptive insights. As in Allen's case, thinking too narrowly about a dangerous man lands him in hot water. And in one story in Dubus III's collection, in which a young woman abused by her father and the two boys she turns to for help, the girl, Lorillee, gains insight into her relationships with these, and all, men: "Sometimes she will feel like spitting as she tastes their juices again and she will have to stand up and pace in her panties over the linoleum floor of her room, all of them becoming one insider her so that she in not seh at all but them, until it feels as if she has never been her but just a part of them that they have kept in their lives for whenever they needed to let things out, a dark and evil part."

A story containing such a passage, which at first reads as misogynistic, cannot, and does not, end well for the girl. But ending well isn't so much the point as the fact that the realization has occured. Lorilee arrives at a truth that could perhaps enable to find the good in her situation, and to eventually emerge from that situation, if not stronger, than freer, wiser, and capable of making choices that are her own. It's a humane sort of story that results from such intense focus on the small gestures and what larger truths such gestures reveal. They are not always satisfying in their resolutions, but they suggest in their uneasy endings a kind of hope--that Lorilee will be able to make the right choice, leaving the men who've abused her in search of something better, brighter; that Allen will decide to think more deeply about his own grief and avoid falling into the same path of violence that doomed Elroy.

You'll have to read the collection to know the shape of Allen's grief, to know Elroy's crime and his motivations. I hope I've encouraged you to do so.

[Booker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dubus III often explores characters from the underbelly of society. This collection has that, but also some of these same characters in a haunting, yet beautiful, natural world. Some of the pieces reminded me of a darker Pam Houston or Ron Carlson. Dubus is one of those authors that is gifted in both the novel and the shorter form, which is rare in my opinion. These stories are not for the feint of heart, but if you appreciate these, you'll appreciate Dubus' other works as well.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grim set of stories by a master at reminding us that EVERYONE has a story. Every single human being, even people we tend to dismiss as trash, druggies, criminals -- in fact, especially those people. These stories will open your heart and pour in compassion like disinfectant on a wound. It hurts, but it's good for you.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dubus demonstrates an interesting talent for presenting highly emotional scenes that are at the same time cold and stark as many of his characters. The prose in these stories is gritty and visceral, appearing quite real. Though not always pleasant, these stories are good throughout.

[Jkwilos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories were so sad and dark but very well written. It reminded a bit too much of patients I have worked with. It is amazing how such a segment of society can be so ignored. I think it is wonderful that they were brought to life in this work.

[J]

He hasn't done me wrong yet

[Kenneth Weene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerfully written but ultimately depressing and filled with alcohol, leaving the reader somewhat numbed.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I loved the House of Sand and Fog, I was very disappointed with these short stories.

[Britanny · Rating 4 out of 5]

dubus has an incredible way of capturing the character's voice. this book of short stories, each with a unique voice and tone, shows that dubus is a force to be reckoned with.

[n. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories were excellent, others were fair. Written in 1989, this book was the first published ( I think) by an author I love.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories just try too hard. They were all gritty and I usually don't mind that, but the title story just didn't ring true for me.