Slightly Like Strangers - Softcover

Listfield, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553345389 ISBN 13: 9780553345384

Publisher: Bantam, 1988

Synopsis

What happens when the masks of courtship are stripped away, when facades and defenses break down?
 
In the bewildering bustle of New York City, the idea of permanence seems at once appealing and somewhat terrifying. When Amanda and Sam finally decide to get married, we have a sharply delineated look at what’s behind many modern relationships. Emily Listfield focuses on the subtleties of everyday life and the nuances of conversation—showing how much is often left unsaid as people try to get along day to day.
 
With Slightly Like Strangers, Emily Listfield establishes herself as an important voice in contemporary American fiction.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Admirers of Listfield's Variations in the Night will welcome the reappearance here of jaded native New Yorker Amanda and solid Midwesterner Sam, who both fear their emotions and, above all, the resulting vulnerability when these feelings are made known. Nevertheless, love inspires them to marry, although they preserve the tentative hope that they'll "always be slightly like strangers to each other." Fashionable readers may enjoy the trendy Manhattan settings and the snappy dialogue" 'So now what do we do?' " asks Sam on their wedding night. " 'Buy a condominium, have two children and get a divorce.' 'That's fine for our long-range plans, but I was thinking about tonight.' " Their easy career successes, the absence of all problems save the interpersonal, and the simplistic psychological studies of Amanda's and Sam's families have the patness of a made-for-TV movie, albeit a pleasant one. Despite Listfield's obvious mastery of the felicitous phrase and her wry observations, her story is thin and not particularly compelling.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Sam and Amanda, a New York couple in their early 30s, are struggling to forge a relationship. Unfortunately, their personalities and experiences, so different and in many ways opposite, serve to erect barriers to honesty and commitment. Amanda, a lifelong New Yorker and the more experienced in relationships, sees long-term commitment as confining; Sam, from a small Ohio town, likes his life neat and orderly and feels threatened by Amanda's restlessness. As a look at the problems of communication in contemporary relationships, this novel rings true in many small details; but it is marred by a surfeit of stereotypes and a cloying prose style that too often employs three adjectives and adverbs where one would do. Lonnie Beene, West Texas State Univ. Lib., Canyon
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0553345389
• ISBN 13: 9780553345384
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272