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About the author
Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was one of the most admired and influential American writers of the last half century. He was the author of five collections of short stories, and two novels: Sylvia (1993), and The Men's Club (1981), as well as numerous essays and screenplays.
Summary
When Leonard meets Sylvia by chance at a friend's shabby Greenwich Village apartment, he's instantly besotted with her striking beauty and quiet disdain. For the young aspiring writer, drifting through the city, the question of what to do with his life was resolved for the next four years.
In this remarkable semi-autobiographical novel, we are drawn into the world of a young beatnik couple living in Manhattan in the early 1960s, and their demi-monde of jazz, poetry, late nights and early mornings. But when Sylvia's depression and disturbances begin to emerge and take hold, their fights become increasingly violent and abusive, and their relationship drifts towards self-destruction.
Written with extraordinary clarity and precision, this is a compelling portrait of the mad intensity, exquisite pain and destructive power of young love.
Foreword
'She said hello but didn't look at me. Too much engaged, tipping her head right and left, tossing the heavy black weight of her hair like a shining sash.'
