From Paris to London to wartime New York, a young woman comes of ageโand comes apartโin this witty novel by the author of The Man Who Loved Children.
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When Letty Fox first arrives in Manhattan, her goal is to escape her chaotic upbringing in London and Paris and the cynicism of her family, and create a fresh new start. This will be the existence she dreamed ofโflitting from affair to affair, debating social issues over martinis, and finishing that novel about Robespierre that will make her envied by all the right people. Yet, Letty is at odds with both the city and herself: sexually adventurous yet fidgety for lasting romance, radically independent yet conservative, as likely to be betrayed by friends as she is to betray. And when Letty runs through the streets of Greenwich Village, itโs as much to unleash her glorious appetite for life as it is to suppress the โblack moodsโ that always threaten to derail it.
โNo wonder [Christina Steadโs] work has reminded many of Tolstoy, Ibsen, Joyce,โ said the New York Times Book Review. When this poisonously funny satire of the American bourgeoisie was first published in 1947, it was banned in the authorโs native Australia, and met with alarm by stateside critics for its moral ambiguity. Ahead of its time with its vibrant and furious heroine, it is destined for rediscovery.
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From an author Saul Bellow called โreally marvelous,โ Letty Fox is a โmerciless, cruel, and magnificently unforgivingโ comedy of manners (Angela Carter, London Review of Books).