I can remember that brick best on the back of our apartment house it was on all the apartment houses on that block, and also on the apartment house where Edward lived-Edward was a small boy I took care of on the evenings when his parents went out. It’s also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. THERE IS A CERTAIN shade of red brick-a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue-that is my childhood in St. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother-each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society-these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human.

Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch-and with him the world of privilege. These short stories filled with “narrative grace and rare craftsmanship ” chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love ( San Francisco Chronicle ).įirst Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey.

Innocence by harold brodkey