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Eva's Man by Gayl Jones. New York. 1976. Random House. 179 pages. March 1976. hardcover. 0394499344. Jacket design and illustration by Wendell Minor.

 

0394499344FROM THE PUBLISHER -

 

 

   Sitting in a prison cell—talking to a cellmate, a psychiatrist, herself, us - Eva Medina Canada is trying to remember it all, to keep memory separate from fantasy. But it is not easy. For a woman with no man and no money has to live in the streets, and there men treat you like a street-woman. There, rankness is the norm and male assumptions are devastatingly raw. Every look, whisper, shout and touch is a violent sexual attack. It is a world where access to a comb, a telephone can become the ultimate symbol of civilization and of human caring. And even before the streets, when Eva was just a child, there was the casual male cruelty of Mr. Logan in the stairwell, of Freddy with his popsicle stick, of Cousin Alfonso; of a husband three times her age; and the man with no thumb. But what is even harder to remember is the reason she is in prison - the five days she spent in a rented room with Davis. And the consequences of those days. Damaged, terrorized and lonely, this solitary woman - weary of sexual contempt and the effort needed to hope - is driven over the line, where murder seems the only shelter. She is mistaken. There is no shelter from the widow’s eyes, from dreams, from Elvira. With the same eerie power that excited reviewers of CORREGIDORA, Gayl Jones has written another sensual, brooding and magnificent novel. 'An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood.' --John Updike, The New Yorker.

 

 

Jones GaylGayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University, and has taught a Wellesley College and the University of Michigan. Her other books include THE HEALING (1998 National Book Award Finalist and New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and many others.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


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