Anne's review of Desperate Characters
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
WOW! Okay, here's Goodreads in action: 3 friends highly recommended this, and after getting it from the library yesterday, I frittered away real-work time reading it. Ignored my boyfriend last night for awhile, just to keep going, and finished up today. Well. What a brilliant, brutal, wicked thing this is! I do love that, yes, this is a novel about a cat bite, of all things--the cat and all the obsessive action and thinking related to it are amazing. Really sharp and twisted, with some of the best dialogue I've read. Fox has a real knack for comparison that gets into the guts of things, too--for example, "At night the street has a quiet earnest look, as though it were continuing to try and improve itself in the dark," or a character described as "like a man preceded into a room by acrobats." This is my first foray into Fox, and I'm ready to join the fan club.
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So my friend Geoff loves it too, & said it's right up my alley. Definitely posting on my to-read list, since two of youse have now pushed it my way.
Geoff, David, Emily--since all three of you quintuple-starred this, I just got from the library today and I'll have you know that I've already wasted an hour of supposed work time reading the first two chapters...suffice to say I'm hooked.
I've read it three times now, and taught it, and this superb book continues to impress. The critic Irving Howe ranked it up there with Billy Budd and The Great Gatsby. That's a high bar, but I think Fox has earned it. Among "short novels," I'd rank it with Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow. I'm sure I'll continue to reread this book like I would a favorite poem or short story.
