Two Serious Ladies
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Book Overview
Two Serious Ladies is the only novel by avant-garde literary star and wife of legendary writer Paul Bowles--a modernist cult-classic, mysterious, profound, anarchic, and funny, that follows two upper-class women as they descend into debauchery--updated with an introduction by Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs. Two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves, Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield embark on separate quests of salvation. Mrs. Copperfield visits Panama with her husband, where she finds solace among the women who live and work in its brothels. Miss Goering becomes involved with various men. At the end the two women meet again, each transformed by her experience.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:006228312X
ISBN13:9780062283122
Release Date:February 2014
Publisher:Ecco Press
Length:240 Pages
Weight:0.45 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"
Customer Reviews
3 ratings
One of my favorite novels
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
This is fiction for persons who can accept of their fiction the same things they expect of life: slipping, sliding, blind-turning, colliding, parting, bewilderment, and a great deal of sly humor. Life does not dole out sane rational narratives. The eternal mystery is why people expect fiction to do so. Does fiction for them represent a means of imposing form on life?
I like it
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
Two serious ladies is a very strange book. The first time I read it I didn't quite undestand it but it caught me instantly. Jane Bowle's style is amazing. Circles and circles of rare relationships, quear people, exotic and everyday's ambients, perfect sentences, subtle humour forms this authentic masterpiece.Once read, it will stay in your mind. Why do these women behave as they do?, what is Bowles triying to tell us? It's all crypt. You can read it and read it all over again and again and your conclusions will change.Bowle's other writing (a play and short fiction)has the same quality: refreshing, new, modern. Nothing you will read will present you such an original brain. After all our tradition is that of sinners
Two Serious Ladies
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
With shrewd wit, candour and a touch of the bizarre, Two Serious Ladies follows the demise into debauchery of two very dissimilar yet equally stodgy women, who aquire a fondness for eccentric personages. Christina Goering - rich, saintly spinster - turns high class call girl, whilst Frieda Copperfield - caught in a respectable, though staid marriage - abandons her husband for Pacifica, a Panamanian prostitute. The restless, autonomous, asexual female seeking self determination independent from men is a poignant theme which Jane Bowles explores with remarkable cleverness, hilarity and ruthless originality.Two Serious Ladies is a marvellous example of Jane Bowles' extraordinary talent as a writer of contemporary fiction - often obscured by her small literary output and the talent of her husband, writer Paul Bowles ... unfortuately so.
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