‘My favourite book. I can’t think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic’ Tennessee Williams
‘The book I give as a gift . . . It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit’ Sheila Heti
‘A modern legend . . . A very funny writer’ Truman Capote
‘Profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true’ Claire Messud
I am going on a trip. Wait until I tell you about it. it’s terrible.
Miss Goering, an eccentric, impulsive New York heiress, resides in her house and tries not to be unhappy.
Mrs Copperfield, an anxious, dutiful married woman, has a great fear of drowning, of lifts, of intruders in the night.
Two serious ladies, nothing is natural for them and anything is possible.
For Mrs Copperfield – a trip to Panama, where she abandons her husband for love of a local prostitute. For Miss Goering – a move to a squalid little house on an island and a series of sordid encounters with strangers. Both go to pieces -and both realise this is something they’ve wanted to do for years.
With an introduction by Naoise Dolan
A W&N Essential
‘The book I give as a gift . . . It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit’ Sheila Heti
‘A modern legend . . . A very funny writer’ Truman Capote
‘Profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true’ Claire Messud
I am going on a trip. Wait until I tell you about it. it’s terrible.
Miss Goering, an eccentric, impulsive New York heiress, resides in her house and tries not to be unhappy.
Mrs Copperfield, an anxious, dutiful married woman, has a great fear of drowning, of lifts, of intruders in the night.
Two serious ladies, nothing is natural for them and anything is possible.
For Mrs Copperfield – a trip to Panama, where she abandons her husband for love of a local prostitute. For Miss Goering – a move to a squalid little house on an island and a series of sordid encounters with strangers. Both go to pieces -and both realise this is something they’ve wanted to do for years.
With an introduction by Naoise Dolan
A W&N Essential
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Reviews
My favourite book. I can't think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic.
A thoroughly original mind - a mind at once profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true.
One of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language.
With TWO SERIOUS LADIES, Bowles joined the small company of women modernists who celebrated their freakishness in the highest style.
A modern legend ... A very funny writer ... with at [her] heart the subtlest comprehension of eccentricity and human apartness.
The book I give as a gift is the novel TWO SERIOUS LADIES by Jane Bowles. Her sentences are so surprising, the plot is like something from a dream, and her mind is deeply unfathomable, precise, funny, earnest and otherworldly. It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit.
Readers who've not yet read Jane Bowles are almost to be envied, like people who've still to read Austen or Mansfield or Woolf, and have all the delight, the literary satisfaction, the shock of classic originality, the revelation of such good writing, still to come.
A landmark in 20th century American literature.
