Paula Fox
Desperate Characters.
Boston: Nonpareil Books, 1980. Nonpareil Books 0879233095 166 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.5" x 8.25", shows shelfwear, with some mild creasing and light rubbing. Binding is sound. Interior is clean and bright. 
This is a reissue of the 1970 novel by US writer Paula Fox (1923-2017). Howe writes ""Desperate Characters" takes its place in a major American tradition, the line of the short novel exemplified by Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts and Seize the Day". When we think of American literature in its distinctive "Americaness," what first comes to mind are those sprawling "open forms" of "Moby Dick" and "Leaves of Grass," where an expansiveness of language and spirit becomes an organizing principle. But there is another tradition, at least as distinguished, in which everything—action, form, language—is fiercely compressed, and often enough, dark-grained as well."