Synopses & Reviews
No Purdy work has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy Depression-era boardinghouse in Chicago plays host to "a game of emotional chairs" () in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society.
Review
" is a remarkable achievement. Purdy is a master of the horrible, the wildly funny, and the very sad." Angus Wilson
Review
"James Purdy should be placed alongside William Faulkner in the Gothic corner of American literature." Gore Vidal
Review
"An overwhelming novel, expertly shaped to turn its full force and fury upon the reader's susceptibilities." New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
No James Purdy novel has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy depression-era boarding house in Chicago plays host to a game of emotional chairs (The Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society. A cast of characters displaced by economic distress congeal around the embittered poet Eustace Chisholm, who acts as a something of a Greek chorus for the doomed and destructive relationship that is instigated when landlord Daniel Haws falls in love with young college student Amos Ratcliffe. Building to a shocking conclusion, Eustace Chisholm and the Works is a dark and gothic look at the strange and terrible power of love amid a psychic American landscape of deluded innocence, sexual obsession, violence, and isolation (William Grimes, New York Times).
Synopsis
"[S]o good that almost any novel you read immediately after it will seem at least a little bit posturing." --Jonathan Franzen
About the Author
James Purdy, born in 1914, is undergoing a major literary renaissance. The author of Malcolm and now The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy, he lived in New York until his death in 2009.