Additional Book Information
Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9781681375373
Pages: 512
Publication Date: June 29, 2021
Boston Adventure
by Jean Stafford, introduction by Rumaan Alam
Boston Adventure is the haunting story of a girl in flight from her impoverished childhood. Sonia Marburg—growing up in a village outside Boston, deserted by her father, and burdened with an insane mother—dreams that life can hold nothing better than the imagined splendor of Beacon Hill. When she becomes the protégée of a wealthy Bostonian, her dream is achieved, and with it comes the revelation of an empty, decadent society.
Praise
Boston Adventure, Stafford’s debut, is like Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, a raw depiction of female isolation.
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
Boston Adventure stands as a textbook example of formal dexterity and invention. . . . Sentence for sentence, Boston Adventure is as beautifully composed as any American novel I have ever read.
—Scott Bradfield, Los Angeles Times
Stafford . . . studiously recreates a certain idea of literary Boston, replete with the flavour of Henry James and William Dean Howells.
—Dennis Zhou, The Times Literary Supplement