Best of '84

Fiction

EDISTO by Padgett Powell. A teen-age boy, wise beyond his years, recalls a complex adolescence on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina.

HIM WITH HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH AND OTHER STORIES by Saul Bellow. A vibrant cast of big shots and shlemiels stumble painfully and comically through the Nobel laureate's latest collection of short and long stories.

TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE by Norman Mailer. An imaginatively plotted murder mystery with metaphysical overtones, from the versatile pen of an irrepressible spirit.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING by Milan Kundera. Czechoslovakia's best novelist plays a number of variations on his favorite theme: the difficult pursuit of happiness in a totalitarian state.

! THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK by John Updike. Satanism, feminism and revenge are the volatile ingredients in this witty fantasy set in contemporary New England.

Nonfiction

BLOODS: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR BY BLACK VETERANS by Wallace Terry. Twenty articulate ex-servicemen contribute to a moving verbal portrait of beleaguered pride and surprising patriotism.

CHURCHILL & ROOSEVELT: THE COMPLETE CORRESPONDENCE edited by Warren F. Kimball. The allies plot grand strategies that will shape the Western world.

DOSTOEVSKY: THE YEARS OF ORDEAL, 1850-1859 by Joseph Frank. The second installment of a five-volume study examines the wellsprings of the Russian soul.

HOME BEFORE DARK by Susan Cheever. A revealing and poignant memoir of the author John Cheever by his sorrowing and sometimes bitter daughter.

SON OF THE MORNING STAR: CUSTER AND THE LITTLE BIGHORN by Evan S. Connell. An unconventional, highly evocative retelling of the celebrated military disaster in southern Montana by a novelist turned historian.