In the Night Cafe begins with promise--a widow meets the young children of her deceased husband and wishes she could take the boy for herself. I thought there was a lot of potential here, but the story abandons this idea and becomes an account of the joys and heartbreak of being married to an alc...
Written with charm and wit, this story initially reads as a somewhat pedestrian story of sexual relationships in the 1970's. By pieces, though, Johnson's tale reveals character studies, in a way, of all the various roles a woman could find herself in during those times; the married woman, the di...
Joyce Johnson's first novel (published under her maiden name, of course). A novel from the Beat generation.
That was the only other conversation she and I ever had. I said, “Caroline, I want to spend some time with Tommy tomorrow.” I had to shout it over the phone to her because a train was going by on the lower level, and hearing a silence at the other end, I knew there wasn’t a prayer she’d let me do...