Customer Reviews

Liars in Love: Stories

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"Liars in Love," has seven solid stories from the late, great, Richard Yates. If you're familiar with Yates from "Revolutionary Road" or his other novels or short stories, you'll know that you're in for a bumpy ride with his cast of characters. Habitually reaching for a cocktail or lighting a cigarette, the Yates characters are never a happy lot. These stories are no excception. The stories are heavily autobiographical and coincide with much of the material in a terrific Yates biography, "A Tragic Honesty." The lead male charcaters (Jack Fields, Bill Grove, et. al) are all Yates at various stages of his life, from little boy in the first story to middle aged down on his luck writer in the final story. The two best stories are indeed the first, "Oh Joseph I'm So Tired," where his mother is once again the object of ridicule, and the last, "Saying Goodbye to Sally," which chronicles Yates' time in Hollywood when he worked on a screenplay for John Frankenheimer on a movie that was never made. A must if you're a Yates fan. For the uninitiated, you need to ask yourself if you like the later short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you do, take a chance. If you don't, this might not be the book for you.