FSG Classics

First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, "Sylvia "draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.
Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster. Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was the author of "Going Places," "I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, "and "The Men's Club," among other books. FSG will publish his "Collected Stories "in June to coincide with the reissue of "Sylvia." First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, "Sylvia "draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.
Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster. ""Sylvia" is a fictionalized memoir, first published in 1992, about Michaels's first wife Sylvia Bloch, who committed suicide . . . At 129 pages, the reissue of "Sylvia," though billed as a novel, has the power and the rawness of memoir."--Mona Simpson, "The New York Times Book Review"