Novel Archives - Page 11 of 11 - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

Janet Hobhouse – Dancing in the Dark (1984)

Bibliographic Description

84.09.W003: Hobhouse – Dancing in the Dark

First Vintage Books Edition, September 1984

120 leaves, pp. [8] 1-2 3-229 [3]

Contents: π1a blurbs and author photo, π1b “ALSO AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES”, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title-page, π3b imprint, π4a dedication “For Cable, Jean-Loup, Michael | Larry, Annie, Judy, Murdoch | and for Tory”, π4b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-229 Dancing in the Dark, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Marc Tauss; interior author photo by John Timbers.

Copies: JDP 1.1 (presumed)

Blurbs

(front cover) Exquisitely written, insightful and poetically concise. – The Village Voice
Set in the lofts, restaurants, discos, and offices—the fast lane—of Manhattan, this deeply telling novel is an original, graceful study of contemporary friendship, love, and marriage. / The decade-old marriage of Morgan and Gabriella Callagher, sophisticated young New York professionals, is in trouble. One sign of this is the constant presence in their lives of Claudio, an endearing and pleasure-seeking waiter. As Gabriella becomes more and more enchanted by the seemingly carefree life of Claudio and his gay friends, Morgan withdraws into his work and their relationship reaches a crisis that brings the novel to its resonant conclusion.
Intelligent, unsentimental and refreshingly exact. – The New York Times
One of the most acute and most serious novels on the theme of modern relationships in the last decade….Hobhouse has leapt into a rare class of novelist-as-social historian that was the métier of Jane Austen, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Intense, accomplished….In prose at once deft and stately, Hobhouse evokes social setpiece scenes of old-style authoritativeness. – The New Yorker

James Crumley – Dancing Bear (1984)

Bibliographic Description

84.09.W002: Crumley – Dancing Bear

First Vintage Books Edition, September 1984

120 leaves, pp. [8] 1-2 3-5 6 7-229 [4]

Contents: π1a blurbs and author photo, π1b “ALSO AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES”, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title-page, π3b imprint, π4a dedication “For the Dump Family Singers | — Orris, Nelon, Young Eugene, Ma, | and Little Shorty”, π4b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-228 Dancing Bear, χ1a blank, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Marc Tauss; interior author photo by Lee Nye.

Copies: JDP 1.1 (presumed)

Blurbs

(front cover) A taut, stirring, highly original thriller. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
His friends call him Milo. No one has ever called him Bud except his father, long dead, and now Sarah Weddington, stirring painful memories and offering him his first case since he abandoned his private practice and took a job marking time on the night shift for Haliburton Security. The case seems almost too easy, hardly worth the large fee, just to satisfy this old woman’s curiosity. But things are soon exploding all over the place and Milo is turning up grenades, machine guns, a kilo of marijuana and a bag of coke…and suddenly Milo is on the run.
Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald have been looking for a successor. Now they have him. – Boston Phoenix
James Crumley is a first-rate American writer…pyrotechnically entertaining, sexy, compassionate. – The Village Voice
[Crumley’s] themes are as American and contemporary as they can be, and he explores the American West and its mythology as well as anyone. Dancing Bear is a terrific book, a novel of incomparably degenerate grace and relentless vitality. – St. Louis Dispatch
Completely unnerving…intelligent, despairing, moving. – The Chicago Sun-Times