The New York stories of Elizabeth Hardwick / Elizabeth Hardwick ; selected and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney

The temptations of Dr. Hoffman -- Evenings at home -- Yes and no -- The final conflict -- A season's romance -- The oak and the axe -- The classless society -- The purchase -- Cross-town -- The bookseller -- Back issues -- On the eve -- Shot : a New York story.

This first collection of Hardwick's short fiction reveals a stylist and as an observer of contemporary life. A young woman returns from New York to her childhood Kentucky home and discovers the world of difference within her. A girl's boyfriend is not quite good enough, his "silvery eyes, light and cool, revealing nothing except pure possibility, like a coin in hand." A magazine editor's life falls strangely to pieces after she loses both her husband and her job. Individual lives and the life of New York, the setting or backdrop for most of these stories, are strikingly and memorably depicted in Hardwick's beautiful and razor-sharp prose.

English