The Many Lives of William D. by Bernard Malamud: The Evening Rise

We know that Bernard Malamud is part, with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, of the Holy Trinity of “great New York Jewish novelists” of the second half of the last century, but if William Dubin, the hero of Multiple Lives of William D. (1979, his penultimate novel, published by Flammarion in 1980) is a Jew, that ultimately had no impact on the story. It tells the life of a man who is preparing to cross, with anxiety, the milestone of 60 years.

William Dubin lives in New England, in Vermont. He married his wife, Kitty, after much delay, but they appear happy. They had a daughter, Maud, 20, and Dubin adopted Gerald, known as Gerry, the son of his wife's first marriage. Dubin is a writer, and more precisely a biographer. After recounting the lives of Thoreau and Mark Twain, he launches into that of DH Lawrence. But then Kitty hires Fanny, a student, as a housekeeper, and Dubin's life changes.