Desperate Characters

Paula Fox

May 1999 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this eBook

One 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."

Ratings and reviews

Seriously? Anyone who thinks that this book is a landmark literary event is the exact kind of person that the book rails against: overindulgent self-engrandizing, pedantics who want to try to prove their insight into humanity by lauding a book that is boring at best and in reality just a facile description of a boring couple. There are no insights to be found here, no revelations, just a recital of boredom which evokes nothing but boredom on the part of the reader. I feel dumber for having read it.

About the author

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.