<div>These short stories filled with &ldquo;narrative grace and rare craftsmanship&rdquo; chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love (San Francisco Chronicle). First Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey. Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch&mdash;and with him the world of privilege. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother&mdash;each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society&mdash;these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist.</div>

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First Love and Other Sorrows

<div>Harold Brodkey&rsquo;s acclaimed novel is a mesmerizing work of literary genius, exploring the momentous events in the life of a family in twentieth-century St. Louis, and a writer still haunted by a childhood tragedy First published in 1991, The Runaway Soul took Harold Brodkey more than three decades to complete. This sprawling novel has since been eagerly embraced by readers and critics alike, earning Brodkey the epithet of an &ldquo;American Proust.&rdquo; Told by Wiley Silenowicz, Brodkey&rsquo;s fictional alter ego, the story snakes back and forth across the unforgettable events of a life. Following the traumatic death of his mother, Wiley recalls his troubling childhood in the care of his cousins: smooth-talking S. L. Silenowicz, his beautiful, emotionally deficient wife, Lila, and their abusive daughter, Nonie, who torments Wiley to no end. In language that soars and hypnotizes, The Runaway Soul fearlessly explores youth and adulthood, love and loss, sex and death, marriage and family, tracing upon one man&rsquo;s odyssey through a troubling world. More than two decades after it first appeared in print, Harold Brodkey&rsquo;s magnum opus remains one of the finest literary works produced by an American novelist in the twentieth century.</div>

The Runaway Soul

<div>From Harold Brodkey come three remarkable stories about the brief lives of two women and the troubling appearance of an angel above Harvard University Considered by many to be among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, Harold Brodkey created fiction that startled, provoked, and often confounded. These three novellas, told through the recollections of fictional alter ego, Wiley Silenowicz, serve as sterling examples of Brodkey&rsquo;s magnificent talent. In &ldquo;Ceil,&rdquo; Wiley imagines the mother he never knew, brilliantly reinventing the woman who died when he was a child of two, creating a parent both idealized and painfully real. In &ldquo;Lila,&rdquo; Wiley remembers his adoptive mother, an unloving and unlovable, self-involved woman, whose early death from cancer left a permanent void in his family. And in &ldquo;Angel,&rdquo;the book&rsquo;s remarkable closing piece, Wiley recalls a heavenly visitation that came to him and many others while studying at Harvard University, and which heralded a truth most difficult to bear. For lovers of literature who have yet to experience Brodkey&rsquo;s unique style, soaring language, and conceptual brilliance, Women and Angels is a marvelous introduction to an American master.</div>

Harold Brodkey
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Books By Harold Brodkey (3 Books)

First Love and Other Sorrows

The Runaway Soul

Women and Angels

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Harold BrodkeyFollow this author

Books By Harold Brodkey (3 Books)

First Love and Other Sorrows

The Runaway Soul

Women and Angels

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Harold Brodkey
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