FRIENDS AND RELATIONS

by Daniel Menaker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 19, 1976

A clutch of irreducible short short stories which suggest, along with the title, a first-person derivation. It's hard to say much about them before they glance off the page. ""Grief"" returns to the death of a brother; two of them stop off with Dave and Anne, reappearing characters, at the old house in the Berkshires where one intransigent uncle lives on, remembering the old ways, cussing out the new; and there's another uncle in ""The Three-Mile Hill is Five Miles Long""--perhaps even farther away. Random sketches deal with a college love affair, a reunion ten years later which leaves him feeling ""like an old man with a cataract,"" and some move on to New York--often a lonely, threatened place to be. Menaker sometimes permits a nice quality of feeling to surface in between the charily offhand exchanges of what was, what is. Something to grow on?

Pub Date: Nov. 19, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1976

Categories: FICTION