The Bellarosa Connection (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

At a glance:

  • Author: Saul Bellow
  • First Published: 1989
  • Type of Work: Novella
  • Time of Work: The 1940’s to the 1980’s
  • Setting: New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Jerusalem
  • Principal Characters: The Unnamed Narrator, Harry Fonstein, Sorella Fonstein, Billy Rose
  • Genres: Social realism
  • Subjects: 1950’s
  • Locales: New York

This novella by Nobel laureate Saul Bellow is a minor contribution to a series of distinguished works in which he has investigated the spiritual malaise of twentieth century America. Humorous, at times stylistically exuberant, The Bellarosa Connection is Bellow’s fifteenth book. It takes the form of the first-person remembrance of Harry and Sorella Fonstein, acquaintances of the unnamed narrator through his stepmother. (Harry Fonstein is a nephew of the stepmother, whom the narrator calls “Aunt Mildred.”) A Polish Jew, Fonstein lost all of his family during the Nazi...

[The entire page is 2700 words long]

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