Two Serious Ladies

'My favourite book. I can't think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic' Tennessee Williams'The book I give as a gift . . . It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit' Sheila Heti'A modern legend . . . A very funny writer' Truman Capote'Profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true' Claire MessudI am going on a trip. Wait until I tell you about it. it's terrible.Miss Goering, an eccentric, impulsive New York heiress, resides in her house and tries not to be unhappy.Mrs Copperfield, an anxious, dutiful married woman, has a great fear of drowning, of lifts, of intruders in the night. Two serious ladies, nothing is natural for them and anything is possible.For Mrs Copperfield - a trip to Panama, where she abandons her husband for love of a local prostitute. For Miss Goering - a move to a squalid little house on an island and a series of sordid encounters with strangers. Both go to pieces -and both realise this is something they've wanted to do for years.With an introduction by Naoise DolanA W&N Essential

The book I give as a gift is the novel TWO SERIOUS LADIES by Jane Bowles. Her sentences are so surprising, the plot is like something from a dream, and her mind is deeply unfathomable, precise, funny, earnest and otherworldly. It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit., Readers who've not yet read Jane Bowles are almost to be envied, like people who've still to read Austen or Mansfield or Woolf, and have all the delight, the literary satisfaction, the shock of classic originality, the revelation of such good writing, still to come., A modern legend ... A very funny writer ... with at [her] heart the subtlest comprehension of eccentricity and human apartness., My favourite book. I can't think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic., One of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language.

Jane Bowles has long had an underground reputation as one of the truly original writers of the twentieth century. Born in New York City in 1917, she lived in Tangier, Morocco, with her husband, Paul Bowles, from 1952 until her death in 1973. Though she wrote only one novel, one short play, and fewer than a dozen short stories over a roughly twenty-year span from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, Jane Bowles has long been regarded by critics as one of the premier stylists of her generation.