Drinking

What's the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents' liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheever's writing, your next drink may have you reaching for...

Writers have always been uniquely inspired by New York City, and the classic stories collected here provide a kaleidoscopic vision of the metropolis in all its grittiness and glamour. New York Stories takes us on an irresistible tour of the city's high life, low life, nightlife, and everything in between - from the dazzling chaos of Times Square to the elegant calm of galleries in the Met, from the wisecracking Broadway guys and dolls of Damon Runyon to the glittering ballrooms of Edith...

Discover John Cheever’s quirky psychological novel that is the perfect book club read. Ezekiel Farragut is a college professor, a drug-addict and a murderer. Locked in Falconer State Penitentiary, he struggles through tormenting visits from his wife, the burden of memory and guilt, and the brutal monotony of his surroundings to retain his humanity, eventually finding the possibility of redemption through an affair with a fellow prisoner. Considered by many to be Cheever's masterpiece,...

This outstanding collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Cheever shows the power and range of one of the finest short story writers of the last century. Stories of love and of squalor, they include masterpieces such as 'The Swimmer' and 'Goodbye, My Brother' and date from the time of his honourable discharge from the Army at the end of the Second World War.

John Cheever's journals reveal the inner life of this remarkable writer and the contradictions that drove him. He loved his wife and their children, but was acutely lonely; he loved women, but he also loved men; he hated himself for his drinking, but for much of his life was dependent upon it; he was a great writer, but one whose acute levels of perception often crippled him as a person. His journals are candid, beautiful and often startling.

Eliot Nailles loves his wife and son to distraction; Paul Hammer is a bastard named after a common household tool. Neighbours in Bullet Park, the two become fatefully linked by the mysterious binding power of their names in Cheever's sharp and funny hymn to the dubious normality of the American suburbs.