num_pages: 156
description: Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage―and a society―wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature.
language: English
title: Desperate Characters
titlecomplete: Desperate Characters
characters: Charlie Russel, Sophie Bentwood, Otto Bentwood, Francis Early, Claire Fischer, Leon Fischer
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, Contemporary, The United States Of America, New York, American, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 8075
places: Brooklyn, New York City, New York
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company