''Mrs. Ted Bliss'' is a 1995 novel by American author
Stanley Elkin
Stanley Lawrence Elkin (May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.
Biograp ...
, published by Hyperion Books. It concerns the last eventful years in the life of an old widow. Elkin won the 1995
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Miami Beach, Florida, after her husband's death due to cancer. She was born in Russia and is Jewish. Her mother bribed an immigration officer and added three years to her age on legal documents in order that she could start working in Manhattan's Lower East Side after their immigration. Her husband, Ted Bliss, had a butcher shop in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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and together they had three kids. Her oldest son dies of cancer at a young age and after her husband's retirement, the couple moved to Florida. She is obsessed with cleaning and also keeps records of the gifts given to her grandchildren in order to keep track and stay impartial with everyone.
The single life of Mrs. Bliss is now filled with expectations of finding a romance or a partner but eventually she is disappointed and heartbroken. She gets involved with Alcibiades Chitral, a drug lord who operates in her neighborhood, and starts using her and her husband's car as a front for his activities. The story keeps introducing various new men in her life, such as Hector Camerando, a
jai alai
Jai alai (: ) is a sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker ''cesta''. It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term ''jai alai'', coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also of ...
pro who helps Mrs. Bliss with some tips on dogs, and Tommy Auveristas, an imposter. Junior Yellin, a once upon a time lover with whom Mrs. Bliss had had a passionate encounter in her husband's butcher shop, also makes a re-entry into her life. She eventually dies when Hurricane Andrew hits Miami and brings massive destruction.
Publication
Following Elkin's death on 31 May 1995 at age 65, the novel was released posthumously on 7 September 1995. Elkin had published ten novels, five short-story collections, and various novellas and non-fiction articles in various magazines and papers during the course of his writing career, which began in the 1950s.
Review and reception
'' Kirkus Reviews'' writes that Elkin makes readers believe that the novel has a plot when drug dealers are introduced in it. However, "there isn't so much a plot as an accumulation of detail about Mrs. Bliss". Elkin's "long poetic sentences about seemingly mundane minutiae" later bring substance to the character of Mrs. Bliss. Walter Goodman, a television critic for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', mentions in his review that "
he book
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Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
may not be Stanley Elkin's best, but it is a smart, generous, melancholy, funny, even elegiac work by a prodigious practitioner". ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...
'' writes that "Elkin is at his best here, blessed with the gift of one-liner insight and a definite, if reluctantly exercised, ability to tug on a reader's heartstrings".
Awards
Elkin won the 1995
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Richard Ford
Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel ''The Sportswriter'' and its sequels, ''Independence Day'', ''The Lay of the Land'' and ''Let Me Be Frank With You'', and the ...
), '' Galatea 2.2'' (by
Richard Powers
Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel '' The Echo Maker'' won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley (born September 26, 1949) is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel ''A Thousand Acres'' (1991).
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a s ...
), and ''The Tent of Orange Mist'' (by Paul West). Elkin had earlier won in the same category for his 1982 novel '' George Mills''.