Donoso, Jose

New York. 1977. June 1977. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark. 0394402227. Translated from the Spanish by Andree Conrad. 209 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lidia Ferrara. Jacket painting, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, by Salvador Dali, (c) A.D.A.G.P., Paris, 1977. keywords: Literature Translated Chile Latin America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - Three interlinked novellas of sinister brilliance and wit. With a mercilessly delighted ear for the telltale nuances of social repartee, with a connoisseur's eye for the Pose and the Attitude, Donoso launches his assault on the would-be-cosmopolitan tastemakers of the not-so-International Set in their Mediterranean playgrounds. Suddenly we are in the thick of war . between a cover girl-and her friends-rebelling against the men who ‘created' them and manipulate them, learning to use the female arsenal of cosmetics, particularly vanishing cream, to devastating effect (so startlingly efficacious when it comes to removing a man's not-so-spare parts) between a successful couple (in the process of buying their dream apartment, decorating it with flawless taste) and their treasured possessions, which suddenly declare a strange Unilateral Independence and start disappearing along with their servants, their friends, the very building they live in, everyone and everything apparently bent on annihilating the perfect world that has been so lovingly mapped out for them . between a young boy and his chic, divorced mother who desperately wants him to be an ideal (i.e., utterly conventional) teenager until he defeats her by transforming himself, literally, into the embodiment of her mindless desires . A magnificently surreal revenge on the Worldly and their Goods! inventory #2980 ISBN: 0394402227.