The Five-Forty-Eight (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Cheever
- First Published: 1954
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: The 1950's
- Setting: New York City and its suburbs
- Principal Characters: Blake, Miss Dent
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Sexism, Sex or sexuality, Mental illness, Feminism, Trains, Business or business people, Suburban life, Secretaries
- Locales: New York, NY
The Story
Among the more successful of John Cheever's urban tales, extending into suburbia, “The Five-Forty-Eight” recounts the brief but harrowing ordeal of a selfish, thoughtless male executive whose recent past comes back to haunt him in the person of a deeply disturbed young woman lately employed—and dismissed—as his secretary.
When Blake first spots the young woman apparently waiting for him to emerge from his office building at the end of the day, he readily recalls her face but not her name. Only gradually does he come to suspect that she might be...
[The entire page is 1271 words long]
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