This novel, which has been hailed as a landmark in twentieth-century American literature, is the story of two staid but very different women going to pieces as they pursue their own eccentric paths to freedom, and the story follows their decline into debauchery. Christina Goering, a wealthy spinster in pursuit of sainthood ends up as a high-class call-girl, and Frieda Copperfield, abandons her dull husband for the love of a prostitute while travelling in Central America. The book is compelling and thought-provoking, and Bowles's original prose style makes it an experience to read.
She was suffering as much as she had ever suffered before, because she was going to do what she wanted to do. But it would not make her happy. She did not have the courage to stop from doing what she wanted to do. She knew that it would not make her happy, because only the dreams of crazy people come true. She thought that she was only interested in duplicating a dream, but in doing so she necessarily became the complete victim of a nightmare.
Well, that was a rambling gallop through the litany of first world problems faced by the bored if ever there was one.
Did this book have shock value when it was first published?
This nearly ended up being the first DNF of 2017, and part of me wish it had been.
