Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
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."
"[Desperate Characters]—tense, quick, prickling with suppressed panic—is very much of its time and has a lot to say to ours, tooIf 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." -- Alexandra Schwartz - The New Yorker
"Paula Fox’s narrative feels singular, particularly in the way it captures, through effervescently intelligent dialogue, the tenuousness of intimate relationships." -- Rose Courteau - New York Times
"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." -- Andrew O'Hehir - Salon
"The first time I read Desperate Characters…I fell in love with it." -- Jonathan Franzen
"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." -- Marisa Silver
"Absorbing, elegant." -- Charles Winecoff - Entertainment Weekly
"Packed with lucid insights." -- Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly
"A perfect short novel…As in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, everything crucial within our souls bared." -- Andrea Barrett
"This perfect novel about pain is as clear, and as wholly believable, and as healing, as a fever dream." -- Frederick Busch
"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." -- Garth Greenwell - The Millions
"Paula Fox’s narrative feels singular, particularly in the way it captures, through effervescently intelligent dialogue, the tenuousness of intimate relationships." -- Rose Courteau - New York Times
"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." -- Andrew O'Hehir - Salon
"The first time I read Desperate Characters…I fell in love with it." -- Jonathan Franzen
"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." -- Marisa Silver
"Absorbing, elegant." -- Charles Winecoff - Entertainment Weekly
"Packed with lucid insights." -- Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly
"A perfect short novel…As in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, everything crucial within our souls bared." -- Andrea Barrett
"This perfect novel about pain is as clear, and as wholly believable, and as healing, as a fever dream." -- Frederick Busch
"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." -- Garth Greenwell - The Millions
Paula Fox (1923—2017) was the author of Desperate Characters, The Widow’s Children, A Servant’s Tale, The God of Nightmares, Poor George, The Western Coast, and Borrowed Finery: A Memoir, among other books.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780393351101 |
| ISBN 10 | 0393351106 |
| Title | Desperate Characters |
| Author | Paula Fox |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | WW Norton & Co |
| Year published | 2015-04-28 |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |