Her brother, author Norman Mailer, became one of the 20th Century's most celebrated and controversial literary figures. Now, 94-year-old Barbara Mailer Wasserman shows that she got writing chops of her own. Whether taking delightful revenge as a kind of proto-Carrie Bradshaw on a rude, real-life Randolph Churchill, or joining the Spanish resistance to smuggle fascist dictator Francisco Franco's political prisoners across the French border, or nonchalantly greeting the news that her brother's novel, The Naked and the Dead, has overnight leapt to the top of bestseller lists, Wasserman is openhearted, touching, whimsical, self-revealing and always acutely conscious of her good fortune.
Peter Alson is having an early mid-life crisis: he's a 33-year-old Harvard grad who has suddenly run out of prospects. He can't seem to finish that novel; he and his girlfriend, Anna, have decided to call it quits (again); and worse, he's flat broke. So when he meets Michael, another Ivy Leaguer who's making a killing as a bookie, he does what any enterprising guy would do: he enters a life of crime, joining a bookmaking operation headed up by characters like Monkey and Steak Knife, where his real education begins. If you combined Basketball Diaries and A Fan's Notes with a dash of Damon Runyon, the result would be something like this-hilarious and heartbreaking-a book that has rightfully taken its place among the classics of down-and-out literature.
Prenumerera på vårt nyhetsbrev för att få fantastiska erbjudanden och inspiration för din nästa läsning.
Genom att registrera dig accepterar du vår personuppgiftspolicy.
