Dear Husband (short story collection)

Dear Husband

First edition cover
Author	Joyce Carol Oates
Language	English
Genre	Short stories
Publisher	Ecco Press
Publication date	March 31, 2009
Publication place	United States
Pages	326
ISBN	9780061704314
OCLC	232977995

Dear Husband is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 2009 by Ecco Press. ^{[1] [2]}

Stories

The book contains 14 stories, all of which have been previously published. ^[3] The book is broken up into two parts.

Part 1

• "Panic" ( Michigan Quarterly Review , Summer 2004) – A family deals with their reactions to a potentially deadly situation.
• "Special" ( Boulevard , Fall 2007) – Details a girl growing up with an older autistic sister who has disfigured her.
• "The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters" ( Fiction , 2007) – A grown woman struggles to deal with her aged father and the knowledge that he is a murderer.
• "Magada Maria" ( Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern , 2007) – A story of a woman's slow downward spiral over the years, told from her last boyfriend's point of view.
• "A Princeton Idyll" ( The Yale Review , October 2006) – 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" ( Salmagundi , Spring/Summer 2009) – A man deals with the pressure of having a famous incestuous mother.
• "Landfill" ( The New Yorker , October 9, 2006) – Murder mystery centered on a young man's death at a fraternity house.
• "Vigilante" (Boulevard, Fall 2008) – Home from college, the protagonist struggles with drug addiction and an abusive father.
• "The Heart Sutra" ( American Short Fiction , Spring 2009) – Two famous poets deal with separation from each other in vastly different fashion.

Part 2

• "Dear Joyce Carol" (Boulevard, Spring 2008) – A series of fictional letters written to the author by a stalker.
• "Suicide by Fitness Center" ( Harper's Magazine , June 2008) – Depressed a woman attempts suicide at a fitness center.
• "The Glazers" (American Short Fiction, Winter/Spring 2008) – Meeting the family of her boyfriend a woman discovers a dark secret.
• "Mistrial" (Storie, 2003) – Retired librarian is on a jury, but has a secret motive.
• "Dear Husband" ( Conjunctions , Fall 2008) – 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 .