"Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1987"--Title page verso.
Contents:
other woman. Killing -- Still of some use -- The city -- The lovely troubled daughters of our old crowd -- Unstuck -- A constellation of events -- Deaths of distant friends -- Pygamalion -- More stately mansions -- Learn a trade -- The ideal village -- One more interview -- The other -- Slippage -- Poker night -- Made in heaven -- Getting into the set -- The wallet -- Leaf season -- Beautiful husbands -- The other woman.
Summary:
"The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives amnipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife's twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent lover, and another must administer her father's death. Bourgeois comforts and youthful convictions are tenderly seen as certain to erode: 'Man," as one of these stories concludes, 'was not meant to abide in paradise.'" -- cover page 4.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.