The Widow's Children

by Paula Fox

Book Overview

On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura and her husband, Desmond, host a bon voyage party in a New York City hotel room that turns into a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. Laura is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, died of a heart attack that morning.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525233776
• ISBN13: 9780525233770
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Life, in 7 Chapters, 224 pages

Something happened on the way from childhood -- from wanting only, like Peter Rice, "to be good," or wanting to be free, or loved, or loving, or safe, or rich, or wanted-- to the widow's funeral. Like the best stories do, this one happens in the hearts and minds of its readers, borne there by the exactness of vision, the precision of craft, the sense of the messenger ever-grappling with the message. Andrea Barrett's essay is a bonus, a sensitive and intelligent reader-response that concludes with the proper advice: "The novel is itself, wholly itself; there is no way to comprehend it except to read it."