Book description
When the beautiful, imperious and moneyed Grace Caldwell Tate wants
something she goes after it. Her affair scandalises Pennsylvania's
elite and she must face the costs to her marriage and the man she
really loves.
A bestseller on publication in 1949, A Rage to Live, is a
candid tale of idealists and libertines, tradesmen and crusaders, men
of violence and goodwill, and women of fierce strength and tenderness.
A man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it
marvellously well -- Ernest Hemingway O'Hara occupies a unique
position...He is the only American writer to whom America presents
itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry
James, or France to Proust -- Lionel Trilling New York Times O'Hara
understood better than any other American writer how class can both
reveal and shape character -- Fran Lebowitz A fascinating character
study by one of America's most underrated storytellers, but there are
other rewards as well. O'Hara's dialogue is unerringly authentic and his
narrative passages as graphic as a photograph Los Angeles Times His ear
for dialogue is legendary, and he evoked New York cabbies, Hollywood
producers and cheap hoods like Pal Joey as easily as he did Park Avenue
socialites... Few authors today write convincingly of matters involving
public life and private morality - they tend to do one or the other. But
O'Hara could intertwine them in a five-page sketch or an 800-page epic.
Washington Post John O'Hara was born in Pennsylvania on 31 January
1905. His first novel,
Appointment in Samarra
(1934), won him instant acclaim, and quickly came to be regarded as one
of the most prominent writers in America. He won the National Book Award
for his novel
Ten North Frederick
and had more stories published in the New Yorker than anyone in the
history of the magazine. His fourteen novels include
A Rage to Live
,
Pal Joey
,
BUtterfield 8
and
From the Terrace
. John O'Hara died on 11 April 1970.
