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Desperate Characters : A Novel by Paula Fox (2015, Trade Paperback)
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Ron's Fabulous Store (2929)
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Brand New trade (larger-sized) softcover, never read. No marks, creases, highlighting, or underlining. In stock. Ships same or next day from Northern California.
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherNorton & Company, Incorporated, w. w.
ISBN-100393351106
ISBN-139780393351101
eBay Product ID (ePID)204102452
Product Key Features
Book TitleDesperate Characters : a Novel
Number of Pages192 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2015
TopicGeneral, Literary
GenreFiction
AuthorPaula Fox
FormatTrade Paperback
Dimensions
Item Height0.7 in
Item Weight6.7 Oz
Item Length8.3 in
Item Width5.5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
ReviewsA masterwork of economical prose...Remarkable...[O]ne can only wonder who is more fatally deluded--the desperate characters of the Bentwoods'' era or the hyperconfident ones of our own., Paula Fox's narrative feels singular, particularly in the way it captures, through effervescently intelligent dialogue, the tenuousness of intimate relationships., A perfect short novel...As in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, everything crucial within our souls bared., Desperate Characters is, simply, a perfect short novel. A few characters, a small stretch of time; setting and action tightly confined--and yet, as in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, everything crucial within our souls bared., A masterwork of economical prose...Remarkable...[O]ne can only wonder who is more fatally deluded--the desperate characters of the Bentwoods' era or the hyperconfident ones of our own., [Desperate Characters]--tense, quick, prickling with suppressed panic--is very much of its time and has a lot to say to ours, too. If you've never read it, or if, like me, it's been a while since you did, now is an excellent moment to pick it up., This perfect novel about pain is as clear, and as wholly believable, and as healing, as a fever dream., Desperate Characters is a hard, bitter, extreme little book that is somehow full of humanity. It has a brilliant narrative device: a cat bite that may or may not be rabid serves as a kind of tow line pulling us through the novel. I've seldom read a book with so much nastiness that manages never to disdain its characters. Extraordinary., Fox dissects a marriage and a social class with the sharpest of knives, cannily undermining not only one couple's false pieties and deceptive comforts but our own as well., A perfect short novel...As in Tolstoy''s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, everything crucial within our souls bared.
Dewey Edition21
Dewey Decimal813/.5/4
SynopsisOne of The Atlantic's Great American Novels One of the New York Times' 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years "A towering landmark of postwar Realism...A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine it seems less written than carved." --David Foster Wallace, Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage--and a society--wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature -- a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts , and Seize the Day ., Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage--and a society--wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature -- a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with " Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts , and Seize the Day .", Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage--and a society--wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature -- a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."
