The Other Side of the Fire

“It began in a garden, as these things will, and she fell in love with her husband’s son. Bloody hell!” Bloody hell is right, because when Claudia Bohanon develops a crush on her handsome young stepson and, all of a sudden oppressively aware of the discontents of comfortable middle–age, starts feeling like a lovesick schoolgirl, everything threatens to get too, too maddening. Originally published in 1983, this is Ellis’s most hilarious novel, a deviously clever anatomy of Love’s misrule and a zingingly pointed demonstration that fools do rush in, don’t they? With a new Afterword by Thomas Meagher.