In this fabulous short story, the crown jewel of John Cheever’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Stories of John Cheever, a man agonizes about class privilege and racism, confessing to the knowledge of a terrible crime and exposing a quiet American family’s darkest secrets.
Wandering about the sleepy Connecticut town of his childhood, where residents lead lives of grueling boredom, a journalist reminisces about the Cabot children: Molly, a sweet girl and his first love; Geneva who pilfered her mother’s diamonds from the clothesline and ran off to the Middle East; Wallace, Mr. Cabot’s bastard son who lives in the tenements across the river; and the dwarf, Mrs. Cabot’s child from an earlier marriage.
An ebook short. A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection.
Praise for John Cheever and The Stories of John Cheever:
"John Cheever is an enchanted realist, and his voice…is as rich and distinctive as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature." —Philip Roth
"As stories go, as compellingly readable narratives of a certain sort of people in a certain time and place—our time and place—John Cheever's stories are, simply, the best." —The Washington Post
"Profound and daring...some of the most wonderful stories any American has written." —The Boston Globe
"Not merely the publishing event of the 'season' but a grand occasion in English literature." —The New York Times
In this fabulous short story, the crown jewel of John Cheever’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Stories of John Cheever, a man agonizes about class privilege and racism, confessing to the knowledge of a terrible crime and exposing a quiet American family’s darkest secrets.
Wandering about the sleepy Connecticut town of his childhood, where residents lead lives of grueling boredom, a journalist reminisces about the Cabot children: Molly, a sweet girl and his first love; Geneva who pilfered her mother’s diamonds from the clothesline and ran off to the Middle East; Wallace, Mr. Cabot’s bastard son who lives in the tenements across the river; and the dwarf, Mrs. Cabot’s child from an earlier marriage.
An ebook short. A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection.
Praise
Praise for John Cheever and The Stories of John Cheever:
"John Cheever is an enchanted realist, and his voice…is as rich and distinctive as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature." —Philip Roth
"As stories go, as compellingly readable narratives of a certain sort of people in a certain time and place—our time and place—John Cheever's stories are, simply, the best." —The Washington Post
"Profound and daring...some of the most wonderful stories any American has written." —The Boston Globe
"Not merely the publishing event of the 'season' but a grand occasion in English literature." —The New York Times
