In Love [Paperback]

New York in the 1950s. A man on a barstool is telling a story about a woman he met in a bar, early married and soon divorced, her child farmed out to her parents, good-looking, if a little past her prime. They’d gone out, they’d grown close, but as far as he was concerned it didn’t add up to much. He was a busy man. Then one day, out dancing, she runs into a rich awkward lovelorn businessman. He’ll pay for her to be his, pay her a lot. And now the narrator discovers that he is as much in love with her as she is with him, perhaps more, though it will take him a while to realize just how utterly lost he is.

Executed with the cool smoky brilliance of a classic Miles Davis track,In Loveis an unequaled exploration of the tethered—and untethered—heart. The story of a casual love affair that becomes serious as soon it starts to fall apart, In Loveharks back to a classic French tradition—what you might call the Novel of Disillusionment—perfected over a century by Constant, Flaubert, Turgenev, and Proust, among others. At the same time, in its use of one-sided dialogue, its film noir sensibility, and its evocation of New York life, this 1953 masterpiece also seems utterly modern—a culmination and a book utterly at home in its moment.  —Lorin Stein, The Paris Review 

“It’s a ruthlessly observant novel with heart-stoppingly good sentences…Hayes’ description of a failed trip the two lovers took to the Jersey Shore is one of the greatest scenes of romantic alienation ever written. He pinpoints the desperate desire for love and the recognition that it is slipping away with magnificent precision: It is one of the most confusing states two people can encounter, and to see it rendered in words is rare and lovely.” —Katie Roiphe,Slate 

One of the greatest, bleakest breakup stories ever told. —The New YorklÄ