Two Serious Ladies
With an introduction by Naoise Dolan
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher
£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
Two Serious Ladies
Narrated by:
Laurence Bouvard
Buy Now for £14.35
-
Narrated by:
-
Laurence Bouvard
'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
'I 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 Dolan
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Critic reviews
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.
A landmark in 20th century American literature.
With TWO SERIOUS LADIES, Bowles joined the small company of women modernists who celebrated their freakishness in the highest style.
A thoroughly original mind - a mind at once profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true.
No reviews yet