Never Say Good-bye [ARC - 'Uncorrected Proof' but contains revisions and corrections by Vanderbilt]

Gloria Vanderbilt

ISBN 10: 039457155X / ISBN 13: 9780394571553

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989

About this Item

5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. 198 pages. Although it says 'Uncorrected Proof' on cover, this copy actually contains Vanderbilt's revisions and corrections, some in pen, others in a fine black marker and some areas of printed text have been pasted in. Condition is Very Good; of course it's all marked up, but that's what makes it interesting, spine lightly faded. STK.

Seller Inventory # 41245

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Never Say Good-bye [ARC - 'Uncorrected Proof' but contains revisions and corrections by Vanderbilt]
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039457155X
• ISBN 13: 9780394571553
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: Uncorrected Proof.
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

The intricately interwoven lives of four women--Jessica, Jane, Garnet, and Billie Mae--and their dreams, romances, tragedies, and triumphs are chronicled over the course of one year in a series of vignettes, reminiscences, and characters' revelations

Reviews

Vanderbilt follows her memoirs ( Once Upon a Time and Black Knight, White Knight ) with this confusing fictional debut that sketches four contemporary women in a sophisticated New York City-scape. Best defined is Jess, manager of an art gallery, who is engaged in an anguished sporadic love affair with Mac, a married TV reporter. Mac's canny wife, Billie Mae, once a dirt-poor country girl, refuses to give up her husband or his contacts, which advance her career as an artists' agent. Jane, an English comic actress, shares her sadistic lover Grafton with an American artist named Garnet, whose most distinguishing feature is a striking resemblance to Jess's long-missing mother, Dolores. The blurred voices and constant chopping and switching among subplots lead to a numbingly cryptic effect. The women desultorily revolve around one another until a few blows of stunning cruelty are dealt and those who are missing return. 35,000 first printing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Four women, connected only by mutual bedmates, provide alternate voices in Vanderbilt's first novel. (She chronicled her life in Once Upon a Time and Black Knight, White Knight) . Elegant widowed Manhattan art gallery owner Jessica Weatherbee, who has suffered devastating personal losses with more to come, ponders her future with long-time lover, married TV journalist Mac Hollis. Mac's wife Billie speaks of her midwestern roots and jealously guarded marriage, while painter Garnet Blackburn and actress Jane Esmond share the kinky sex (hints of bondage and bruising) of artist Grafton Davis, who has bedded Jess and will work with Billie. Interspersed are diaries of Dolores Willis, Jess's mother who vanished some 50 years earlier and has been held in a Russian sanitarium. What might aspire to be a novel about love and loss is more about lifestyles of the rich and famous, with a dash of old-time political intrigue. Buy only for demand. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89.
- Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.