This story renders the complexity and depth of emotion that accompanies the most quotidian and universal of human events: having children, being married, infidelity, experiencing parental and romantic love, and the keeping of secrets. Each of these events is something that almost every Western subject will either experience directly or come into proximity with during their lifetime. Dubus, however, is interested in the distinct and acute emotions and psychological machinations that accompany these mundane events—the small, yet crucial, elements that elevate them above the routine and make them intense, and intensely individual, affairs. Within the story’s narrative system, even murder becomes swallowed into the quotidian, as it is ensconced within an emotional and psychological context that feels utterly ordinary and relatable. From Richard Strout’s murderous reaction to being emasculated and abandoned, to Matt Fowler’s quiet, calculated act of cathartic vengeance for his fallen son, Dubus depicts what might otherwise be seen as spectacular or extreme as eminently logical, albeit weighted by intense psychological distress.

The character of Matt Fowler is a prime example of Dubus’s exploration of what lies beneath the mundane. An unassuming white man close to retirement age who lives in a working-class, sleepy beach town and runs a department store, he seems like a simple, unremarkable man, and an unlikely murderer.