Dancing After Hours [review]

Dancing After Hours by Andre Dubus
Published by Knopf on February 13, 1996
234 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-67943-107-7
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
cw: self-harm

Goodreads | IndieBound

I picked up Dancing After Hours a couple years ago at a library used book sale and proceeded to forget about it entirely. I finally made a pile of the owned-yet-unread books I had clogging up my shelves and when it came time for the Make Me Read readathon, I decided to pull books exclusively from this pile. And I’m glad I threw this one into the mix.

Always in the office she felt that she was two people at once. She believed that the one who performed at the desk and chatted with other workers was the woman she would become as she matured, and the one she concealed was a girl destined to atropy, and become a memory.

Dancing After Hours is an incredibly well-written collection of short stories. The writing itself is so compelling and the characters all have rich interiors. Each story, many of which are intertwined, provides a glimpse at the reality of humanity and the motivations behind us all. I can’t remember the last time I highlighted so many phrases in a book. And!!! I counted multiple instances of women-loving women, which was a nice touch for me. I’d highly recommend this book to anyone interested.

Standing in electric light, she gazed at its beauty out there under the dark sky, and felt the old and faint dread that was always a part of her thrill when she saw falling snow, as though her flesh were born or conceived with its ancestors’ knowledge that this windblown white silence could entrap and freeze and kill.

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