Hayes's masterpiece is an exquisite depiction of a doomed love affair set in noirish, 1950s New York.
In a Manhattan bar, a middle-aged man tells a pretty girl a story: of how he fell into a relationship with a lonely young divorcee; of how one night she was offered a thousand dollars to sleep with a stranger; and of how he and she would subsequently betray each other in turn. In Alfred Hayes's exquisite novella, love - in all its bewildering turns of longing, elation, heartbreak and regret - is dissected with unforgettable honesty and heartbreaking clarity.
Alfred Hayes (1911-1985) was born in London and grew up in New York, where he later worked as a newspaperman. After joining the army in 1943 he served with the US forces in Italy. While in Rome he met Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini on the film Paisa, and began his career in script-writing. He moved to Hollywood to work in the movies and was twice nominated for an Oscar for his scripts. Hayes' seven novels include The Girl on the Via Flaminia (1949), In Love (1953), My Face for the World to See (1958) and The End of Me (1968).
Title: In Love
Author: Hayes, Alfred
ISBN: 9780241307137
Binding:
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication Date: 2017-01-26
Number of Pages: 128
Weight: 0.0998 kg
A small masterpiece ... Compelling and flawless ... A gem -- Frederic Raphael
A little masterpiece -- Elizabeth Bowen
Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences -- Paul Bailey
Moving and convincing ... a lyrical, intelligent book * Guardian *
Besides being a technical tour de force, In Love is literature; it is a work of art -- Julian Maclaren-Ross
I have read and reread this small book as though it werea poem rather than a fiction: not a description of experience but the thing itself -- Vivian Gornick * New York Review of Books *
