(front cover) Ellen Foster is a southern Holden Caulfield, tougher perhaps, as funny….A breathtaking first novel. – Walker Percy
“When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.” From the opening line of Kaye Gibbons’ startling, open-hearted novel, the little girl who calls herself Ellen Foster commands our respect, attention, and affection. Cast adrift after the deaths of her drunken father and sadly misused mother, Ellen moves from one woebegone situation to another until she finds a real home and a measure of wisdom through the graces of her “colored” friend, Starletta.
A stunning new writer…The life in this novel, the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word! – Eudora Welty
Gibbons’ debut novel has a funny, quick release and an enveloping spell. A triumph of Southern voice…It has the integrity of an achieved vision. – James Wolcott, Vanity Fair
The story of a redoubtable girl who overcomes adversity with humor, spunk, and determination, Kaye Gibbons’ first novel is a work of considerable subtlety and intellectual sophistication. A terrific book. – Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
[on upper-left of left page of title-page spread] RAYMOND KENNEDY | [the remainder of title-page across two page spread] LuLu | INCoGNITo | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE | Vintage Books | NEW YORK
(front cover) Kennedy is a master storyteller…The author’s vision has to do with a real wisdom of the heart. – Raymond Carver
And yet the girl named Lulu Peloquin, who works behind a candy counter at F. W. Woolworth. stands out in her very desire to avoid the attention of others. First she is noticed by Agnes Rohan, the druggist’s daughter, who motives are not pure. Then it is the dashing man-about-town Mr. Rafferty, who sees Lulu as a fairy-tale damsel in distress and sweeps her off to the home of the town’s wealthiest woman, the regal Mrs. Gansevoort. So begins Lulu’s adventures in self-transformation, as she is drawn further and further into a demimonde where she finds herself a pawn in the games of people who will never really care to know her.
“There was, after all, the mystery of Lulu. It was not a question of what she had done, or even what happened to her, but of who she was. She was so little known.” [Excerpt]
Raymond Kennedy’s writing has the touch of magic! – The New Yorker
If it is a sentence Raymond Kennedy wrote, then it is a sentence an artist made. – Gordon Lish Raymond Kennedy’s chronicle of the destruction of a sensitive girl at the hands of a vengeful society queen and her slave-gigolo highlights this talented novelist’s flair for atmosphere and his revelation of the murky recesses of the human psyche. – James Purdy
[within compartment of triple rules 155 x 87 mm] Family | Resemblances | [rule 12 mm] | Lowry Pei | [rule 12 mm] | Vintage Contemporaries | Vintage Books | A Division of Random House | New York
(front cover) A remarkable first novel. – The New York Times Book Review
Karen Moss—fifteen and a half, recovering from her first real crush on a boy—is sent to spend the summer with her Aunt Augusta, a beautiful, thirty-five-year-old insomniac who keeps the windows of her old Buick closed so that people will think it’s air-conditioned. During the summer Karen leanrs many things—how to drive a car, how to drink wine, the appeal of baseball and, not least, the many forms that love can take and the demands it makes.
Mr. Pei’s clean, limpid, almost translucent prose renders the perfect plot of Family Resemblances all but invisible as small events build to genuine suspense….The complicated losses and gains…make for good fiction and plenty of ambiguity. Or, as Augusta told Karen at the beginning of the summer, ‘Things are not anywhere near as black and white as you think, you’ll find that out someday if you have the nerve to pay attention.’ – The New York Times Book Review
Engages the reader, even brings tears. – Chicago Tribune
Captures the glory and anguish of adolescence. – Harvard Magazine
ANYWHERE | BUT HERE | by | MONA SIMPSON | [patterned rule 17.5 mm] | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK | [patterned rule 91 mm]
Copies: JDP 1.6, with other images consulted online
Blurbs
(front cover) Mona Simpson takes on—and reinvents—many of America’s essential myths….A stunning first novel. – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Mona Simpson’s deeply moving and often comic novel is at once a portrait of Ann August, wise child, and her mother, Adele, a larger than life American Dreamer, and a brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation. Generous is scope and characterization, rich in imagery and poetic language, Anywhere But Here is a truly remarkable achievement.
One of the most highly praised literary debuts in years, “crafted with the assurance and virtuosity of a seasoned storyteller.” – Wall Street Journal
A real big, burgeoning talent. The two women in this book are American originals. Ann is a new Huck Finn, a tough, funny, resourceful love of a girl. Adele is like no one I’ve encountered, at once deplorable and admirable—and altogether believable. – Walker Percy
An amazing novel. Mona Simpson joins those female literary stars—Colette, Willa Cather—whose voices are uniquely recognizable, always their own. – Gail Lumet Buckley, Vogue
Brilliant, funny, at times astonishing…To judge from Anywhere But Here, Ms. Simpson is both a novelist and a poet, and her talents are prodigious. – Le Anne Schreiber, The New York Times Book Review
Copies: JDP 1.4, with other images consulted online
Blurbs
(front cover) A powerful and profoundly disturbing book…reminiscent of the painting of Bosch…Kosinski’s prose is perfect to his purpose, lucid as a gem. – The New York Times
Jerzy Kosinski’s classic vision of moral and sexual estrangement brilliantly captures the disturbing undercurrents of modern politics and culture. In this haunting novel, distinctions are eroded between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrator and victim, narcissism and anonymity. Kosinski protrays men and women both aroused and desensitized by an environment that disdains the individual and seeks control over the imagination in this unforgettable and immensely provocative work.
Céline and Kafka stand behind this accomplished art….Low keyed, efficient, controlled, the prose of Steps encompasses the banal, the picturesque, the monstrous….Scene illuminates adjacent scene; vignette after vignette stays in the memory. – Hugh Kenner, The New York Times Book Review
Steps is a beautifully written book. It is precise, scrupulous, and poetic. I can think of few writers who are able to so persuasively describe an event, set a scene, communicate an emotion. – Geoffrey Wolff, New Leader
More than a novel, this is a collection of erotic reminiscences, a log of the outrageous. – Newsweek
