A collection of three novellas
A Theft
A clever but tender novella is also Bellow's first book to feature a
woman as its principal character. A 40ish executive of an international
publishing group, Clara is "the czarina of fashion writing," the
breadwinner of her family. Clara's powerful facade is vulnerable to the
demands of her heart. Two youthful love affairs gone sour had
precipitated suicide attempts, and now she is unnerved by the theft of
her emerald ring--an engagement ring from a brilliant man she never
married but still adores.
The Bellarosa Connection
The aging, lonely, and nostalgic narrator, a memory specialist, summons
from the past the book's story within a story concerning his onetime
acquaintance, Jewish refugee Harry Fonstein. Saved from the hands of the
Nazis by an Italian underground movement spearheaded by Broadway showman
Billy Rose, Fonstein immigrates to America, where he prospers--in
business and in his marriage to an obese and brilliant woman. But his
obsessive efforts to thank Rose are thwarted by the charismatic yet
obnoxious, even deviant personality.
Something to Remember Me By
The remembrance--back in Chicago of 1933--of a 17-year-old boy's first
encounter with a hooker, this is a wonderfully comic episode, occurring
against the somber backdrop of the lingering death of the boy's mother
by cancer. The story brims over in the riches of Bellow's observing eye
and his pulse-perfect renderings of life's textures in immigrant Chicago
during a dreary Depression winter.
