Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is
parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed
a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous
disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault
lines and fractures in a marriage--and a society--wrenching itself
apart.
First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands
as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's
craft in postwar American literature -- a novel that, according to
Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss
Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."