This novel created a transatlantic literary sensation when it was first published in 1960 in the United States, and shortly afterward, in England. Set in Manhattan during a summer in the late 1950s, the story tells of a young woman who submits to a risky deception in order to obtain a legal abortion.
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Editorial Reviews
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"It is an extraordinary piece of work. She's an amazingly gifted writer, and it's a very moving and exact study of the death of love, the hideously whistling space where all our values used to be. Exactly because her Timothy and Natasha are so unremarkable she conveys a grim sense of how remarkable, if one's going to survive this desert, one's got to become; she makes us see, far better than they do, what they lack and what this lack means. Her people are the 'beat' generation, stripped of the dubious protection of the uniform, the pose, the shrillness, the fake poetry and the fake jazz--though everything they go after is equally, in its own way, fake--and her book is the best thing I can remember reading on the subject." -- James Baldwin
From the Publisher
The New Yorker: This splendid first novel deals with the progress and death of a love affair...Mrs. Solomon's writing is even, furious, humoress, and as clear and sound as writing of this colloquial, up-to-date kind can be. She is a very good novelist.
Associated Press: An astonishingly perspicacious novel, and a first novel too...read this for the people in it, for the story, for the grim message, for the artistry in the telling.
Dwight Macdonald: An extraordinarily good first novel, written with feeling and style.
John Braine, author of Room at the Top: There is a genuine and constructive anger here, and the compassion without which such anger can only be sterile and destructive.
The Chicago Sun: FIRST NOVEL LIGHTS UP DREARY YEAR...It is stimulating to discover a youthful new novelist endowed with sparkling wit, dramatic fire, and imaginative power.
The Sunday Telegraph Colin Wilson: Miss Solomon evokes the increasing feeling of purposelessness with great skill...It looks as if Miss Solomon is one of the few young writers in America who may convince us that there are moral implications behind the Beat way of life. If so, she could become an important spokesman of her generation.
The Village Voice: A most impressive work.
The Bridgeport Sunday Post: In one word: It's 'Superb'.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Beat of Life by Barbara Probst Solomon,
By Caryn (NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Beat of Life (Paperback)
James Baldwin was right. This is "an extraordinary piece of work" and Barbara Probst Solomon is "an amazingly gifted writer". This first novel moved me. The couple, Timothy and Natasha just want to make love and be happy, and as Baldwin wrote, regarding Probst Solomon, "she conveys a grim, grim sense of how remarkable, if one's going to survive this desert, one's got to become; she makes us see far better than they ever do, what they lack and what this means...her people are the 'beat' generation, stripped of the dubious protection, the pose, the shrillness, the fake poetry and the fake jazz...and her book is the best thing I can remember reading on the subject." Baldwin put it much better than I could. I simply loved this novel and feel better to have read it.
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