So what is a man if he cannot work? Tom defends capitalism when Jamey says that property is theft. Capitalism demands our labor from early adulthood to death. He watches and he stews.įor working-class men who work with their hands and bodies, the loss of physical abilities may be obliterating. He watches as the man across the street works two jobs trying to get his wife and kids out of their unsafe neighborhood. He clocks the middle-aged son who occasionally checks on his elderly mother. He listens through the walls as his neighbor yells at her kids and her boyfriend yells at her. The beauty salon where the owner allows him to use her phone. He only sees the liquor store where he soothes his pain.

Tom hobbles through a world he fails to see. His college-age son, who has been neglected as Tom has sunk into hell.

The alcohol that is his “pain distracter.” His busted marriage. The painkillers that became a problem until he weaned himself from them. The injury, months of rehab, unrelenting pain. Alone on his couch, he rehearses the litany of troubles that have led him there. When that scheme is thwarted, Tom returns to his Section 8 apartment. Tom’s half-baked plan is to take revenge by stealing cash-advance checks from the banker’s trash. The banker had urged Tom to take out a mortgage, then foreclosed when Tom’s injury made work impossible. They pass Phillips Academy, the prep school in Andover, Mass., “a place dedicated to opening door after door for its students, most of whom come from families for whom doors are rarely closed anyway.” Tom’s resentment is the neon glare reflecting off the streets. In “ Such Kindness,” Andre Dubus III offers Tom as an angry Siddhartha Gautama, the pre-enlightenment Buddha, resentful and grieving all that he has lost and as yet unaware of any path forward.Īs the book opens, Tom is sitting in a car with his neighbor, Trina, and Jamey, the young man driving them to the home of Tom’s banker. A skilled builder, in a moment of carelessness he fell off a roof and shattered his bones. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

White house andre rush