Every evening at five o'clock, Christina and Rudy stopped work and began the ritual commonly known as Happy Hour. Rudy mixed Christina's drink with loving precision, the cavalier slosh of Bombay Sapphire over ice shards, before settling across from her in his Stickley chair with his glass of Scotch. They shared a love of language and music (she is an author, he a composer, after all), a delight in intense conversation, a fascination with popes, and nearly thirty years of life together.What did I think, that we had forever? muses Christina, seven months after Rudy's unexpected death. While coming to terms with her loss, with the space that Rudy once inhabited, Christina reflects on their vibrant bond--with all its quirks, habits, and unguarded moments--as well as her passionate sorrow and her attempts to reposition herself and her new place in the very real world they shared.In this literary jewel, a bittersweet novella of absence and presence and the mysterious gap between them, Gail Godwin has performed a small miracle. In essence, Evenings at Five is a grief sonata for solo instrument transposed into words. Interwoven with meditations and movements, full of aching truths and a wicked sense of humor, it exquisitely captures the cyclical nature of commitment--and the eternal quality of a romance completed.
The novel tells the story of a young gay advertising executive struggling to find himself and true love in 1970's New York. Author Jeffrey Sharlach paints a picture of life in New York for a gay man at that moment in history. From the streets of Greenwich Village to summers on Fire Island to the dawn of AIDS, Sharlach writes with humor, poignancy, and charm, presenting characters who are universal in their appeal. Running in Bed's incomparable, evocative images will resonate with readers, regardless of their personal.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author of the essay collection Shiksa Goddess ("Utterly delicious"--Judith Thurman), a dazzling debut novel, a comedy about New York's urban gentry living in a post-9/11 world--the arbiters of fashion and the doyennes of charity balls; about the rich and the nouveau rich(er), the glamorous and the desperate to be.We meet Francesca Weissman, the Upper East Side pediatrician rated number one by Manhattan magazine, who takes us into the upper strata of privilege and aspiration (she's originally from Queens with a father in hosiery; life on the fringes of glittering New York is fine with her) . . . Samantha Acton, thoroughbred descendant of the Van Rensselaers and the Carnegies, who defines the social order in the great tradition of Mrs. Astor and Babe Paley . . . Judy Tremont from Modesto, California, daughter of a cop--her life's work, her obsession, is New York society and its richest families . . . Barry Santorini, Republican, moviemaker, winner of twelve Oscars, and his wife, the Italian supermarket heiress and former media rep for Giorgio Armani . . . and many more. As Elements of Style opens out, we see a madcap mosaic of the social lives and mores of twenty-first century Manhattan--of romance, work, family, and friendship. Satiric, fierce, touching--and deliciously Wasserstein."Pure Wendy! She effortlessly makes the leap from stage to page with a novel that is loving, compassionate, flat-out funny. Wendy loved the word 'scintillating,' which is the best way to describe her stunning Elements of Style."--John Guare"Wasserstein gets the trappings and tribulations (of friendship and of romance) right, making her depiction of the rich and fab trying to connect with one another witty and entertaining."--Publishers Weekly"Bold, nimble, and funny to its fingertips, Elements of Style is a delight, a triumph. A book that no self-respecting New Yorker should be without. Those cursed with the hell of multiple residences will self-evidently need several copies--and spares, for houseguests."--Flora FraserFrom the Hardcover edition.
"Amy Bloom gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books."--The New YorkerA great short story has the emotional depth and intensity of a poem and the wholeness and breadth of a novel. Amy Bloom writes great short stories. Her first collection, Come to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and here she deepens and extends her mastery of the form. Real people inhabit these pages, the people we know and are, the people we long to be and are afraid to be: a mother and her brave, smart little girl, each coming to terms with the looming knowledge that the little girl will become a man; a wildly unreliable narrator bent on convincing us that her stories are not harmless; a woman with breast cancer, a frightened husband, and a best friend, all discovering that their lifelong triangle is not what they imagined; a man and his stepmother engaged in a complicated dance of memory, anger, and forgiveness. Amy Bloom takes us straight to the center of these lives with rare generosity and sublime wit, in flawless prose that is by turns sensuous, spare, heartbreaking, and laugh-out-loud funny. These are transcendent stories: about the uncertain gestures of love, about the betrayals and gifts of the body, about the surprises and bounties of the heart, and about what comes to us unbidden and what we choose.From the Hardcover edition.
More than one hundred riddles about outer space, such as "When astronauts get married, where do they go? On honeymoons." and "When can't you visit the moon? When the moon is full."
Evenings at five by Gail Godwin | Literally Just Books
