Desperate Characters (novel)
novel by Paula Fox
Desperate Characters is a 1970 novel by Paula Fox.
Plot
Sophie and Otto Bentwood are a childless, upper-middle class married couple who live in a brownstone in Brooklyn. She is a translator, he an attorney, currently preoccupied by the acrimonious break-up of his long-time business partnership. The action of the novel unfolds in a single long weekend following an incident in which a stray cat bites Sophie on the hand. Though she refuses to see a doctor, Sophie worries incessantly that she may have contracted rabies.
Sophie attends a party, lunches with a friend, shops for kitchen appliances, and drives with Otto to their country home. On a night-time walk with Otto's partner, Charlie Russell, she inadvertently confesses to having had an affair. A series of disquieting events – a rock thrown through a bedroom window, a mysterious phone call, the vandalism of the country house – unnerve the Bentwoods, heightening the fragility of their emotional states and their marriage.
On Monday morning, Sophie announces aloud, with "extraordinary relief", "God, if I am rabid, I am equal to what is outside." Shortly afterwards, however, it is established that she is not rabid. Yet on the telephone to an acquaintance, Sophie lashes out; and when Otto arrives home from work, to a phone call from Charlie, he finally has an outburst of rage, hurling against the wall a bottle of ink with which Sophie had planned to write a letter to her mother.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Desperate Characters (novel)” as novel by Paula Fox. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as novel by Paula Fox. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5264929. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Desperate Characters (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.