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The title A Small World is available for purchase only through direct contact with the author by email using the button to the left. Neither Outskirts Press nor its affiliated distributors are involved in the sale or distribution of this title. Outskirts Press is not responsible for the fulfillment of any order of this title. Outskirts Press has no responsibility in connection with any transaction between you and the author.
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This novel portrays a world of privilege with wit and poignant economy. At its center is a woman who rises from humble beginnings to lend glamor to that world when, despite misgivings, she marries into a newspaper dynasty dominated by a capricious magnate. Her destiny takes her to Manhattan, to a society in Long Island that illustrates her belief that the rich have never lived so riotously as during the Depression and to a bizarre castle in California. During World War II, she goes as a correspondent to London where she has her only rewarding relationship with a man who is younger than herself, and later to Paris when she abandons her husband. It is in this city that, after several disillusioning affairs, that her life ends with her recognition that the world, which had once seemed immense with promise, is no bigger than a hotel room.
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Born in a derelict mining hamlet, Belle Harkness is destined to enjoy a life of privilege that will lead her to New York and an appearance in Florenz Ziegfeld’s “Follies.” With misgivings, she marries William [Willy] Harkness, Jr. whose father is a newspaper magnate . She and her husband become members of a set on the North Shore of Long Island that illustrates her belief that the rich had never been richer than during the Depression.
Because of his adolescent obsession with her body, Willy authorizes a hysterectomy. Her days turned purposeless, she works for the newspaper Willy’s father has given him. There, she opposes the isolationist organization, America First. When America enters WWII, she goes to England as a correspondent where her husband shows himself to be a coward. In disgust, she has an affair with a young airman, later grievously wounded in
the Battle of the Bulge. Distressed, she walks out on Willy and lives in Paris for several years, returning to America when he files for divorce, she begins her fall, first in an affair with a Paris restaurateur and then with an habitué of the Racquet Club, who, she believes, will open doors closed to her. This section evokes the Fifties with its social order that has disappeared into oblivion. The reader is brought back to the opening scene and the circumstances that - her illusions come to dust - have led Belle to take her life. In the closing chapter, the narrator reads a deposition by Belle and learns of her one sexual relationship that was not infected with resentment on her part and corrupted by exploitation on the man’s.
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