Desperate Characters (novel)
- Desperate Characters (novel)
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Desperate Characters is a 1970 novel by Paula Fox.
Plot
Sophie and Otto Bentwood are a middle-aged, middle class, childless Brooklyn Heights couple trapped in a loveless marriage. He is an attorney, she a translator of books. Their existence is affected not only by their disintegrating relationship but by the threats of urban crime and vandalism that surround them everywhere they turn, leaving them feeling paranoid, scared, and desperately helpless. The film details their fragile emotional and psychological states as they interact with each other and their friends.
Critical reception
Although the novel got generally good reviews when it was released, it fell out of print until reprinted in 1999.[1] In the preface to the new edition, Jonathan Franzen called it the greatest realist novel of the postwar era.
Notes
- ^ "Desperate Characters: A brilliant, cheerless little classic from 1970, long out of print, resurfaces." BY ANDREW O'HEHIR Salon 6-16-1999 [1]
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