Pretty Leslie: A Novel

R. V. Cassill

Dis 2014 · Open Road Media

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A “jolting, disturbing” novel from “a writer of the first rank,” about a midcentury housewife’s secret sexual drives (The New York Times).

Beautiful, intelligent, and charming, Leslie Daniels is the wife of a successful Illinois physician. To her friends and family, she appears to be happily living the American dream. But there is another side to Leslie, one propelled by lust and unsettling impulses that run completely counter to her comfortable midwestern routine.

So far, Leslie has managed to keep her unwholesome appetites in check, but when her husband travels out of town to attend a medical conference, she takes the opportunity to commit her first act of adultery. What ensues is a stunning plunge into the depths of desire and despair as Leslie realizes that, once freed from the boundaries of convention, her urges can never again be contained or satisfied.

Hailed by the New York Times as a “novel of unusual power” about “a spiritual sister to Dostoevsky’s ‘underground man,’ ” Pretty Leslie is a testament to the astonishing powers of R. V. Cassill’s imagination. It is also, from first page to last, a thrilling, unrelenting, and absolutely unforgettable sexual drama.
 

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R. V. Cassill (1919­–2002) was a prolific and award-winning author and a highly regarded writing teacher. Among his best-known works are the novels Clem Anderson and Doctor Cobb’s Game and the short stories “The Father” and “The Prize,” the latter of which won him an O. Henry Award. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Purdue University, and Brown University, Cassill taught many acclaimed authors, including Joy Williams and Raymond Carver. He founded the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) in 1967 and after his retirement became the editor of TheNorton Anthology of Short Fiction, a position he held for nearly a quarter century.