Mr. Right Is Dead - by Rona Jaffe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Best of Everything, a witty, cynical short story collection about the modern woman's search for love.

In this satirical collection of short fiction, the sharp, social observations that readers have come to love Rona Jaffe for in her classic novels The Best of Everything and Class Reunion shine in this novella and five short stories featuring the hopefulness and disappointments of the quest for love. In the title novella, a call girl is admired for her resilience in the face of life's difficulties as she acquires lovers and money with a kind of innocence. In "Rima the Bird Girl", a woman takes on a new identity with every new romantic entanglement. Exploring themes of female identity, societal expectations and the disillusionment of romance, Mr. Right is Dead is Rona's Jaffe's finest and most literary work.

About the Author

Rona Jaffe (1931-2005) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended the Dalton School and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 at the age of nineteen. In her early twenties, she worked at Fawcett Publications, starting as a file clerk and working her way up to associate editor. At twenty-five, she quit her job to focus on her novel The Best of Everything (1958). She went on to write sixteen more books during her career including Mr. Right Is Dead (1965), The Other Woman (1972), Family Secrets (1974), Class Reunion (1979), The Road Taken (2000), and The Room-Mating Season (2001). In 1995, she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation, supporting promising emergent women writers. Jaffe died of cancer in 2005.