'On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who was later to be the cause of a sensation in New York awoke much too early for her night before'... This particular morning Gloria finds herself alone in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress and her stockings and panties. When she takes a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she sets in train a series of events that will lead to tragedy. A bestseller on its first publication, BUtterfield 8 is the glittering story of a 1930s glamour girl whose ill-starred entanglement with a respectable married man is set against a backdrop of Manhattan bars and bedrooms.
About the Author
John O'Hara was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on 31 January 1905. He was the eldest of eight children. He had many occupations including engineer, ship steward, railway freight clerk, gas meter reader, amusement park guard, steel mill worker, soda fountain assistant and journalist. His first novel, Appointment in Samarra (1934), won him instant acclaim, and quickly came to be regarded as one of the most prominent writers in America.He won the National Book Award for his novel Ten North Frederick and had more stories published in the New Yorker than anyone in the history of the magazine.His fourteen novels include A Rage To Live, Pal Joey, BUtterfield 8 and From the Terrace. John O'Hara died on 11 April 1970.
Industry Reviews
A man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well -- Ernest Hemingway
O'Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character -- Fran Lebowitz
O'Hara occupies a unique position...He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust -- Lionel Trilling * New York Times *
More than any other American novelist, O'Hara has both reflected his times and captured the unique individual for generations to come * Los Angeles Times *