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Момичета с летни дрехи

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248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

369 people want to read

About the author

Irwin Shaw

264 books424 followers
Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in the South Bronx, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants. Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for his novels, The Young Lions (1948) and Rich Man Poor Man (1970).

His parents were Rose and Will. His younger brother, David Shaw (died 2007), became a noted Hollywood producer. Shortly after Irwin's birth, the Shamforoffs moved to Brooklyn. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college. He spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.

Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows, including Dick Tracy, The Gumps and Studio One.

Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936) was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including Talk of the Town (a comedy about civil liberties), The Commandos Strike at Dawn (based on a C.S. Forester story about commandos in occupied Norway) and Easy Living (about a football player unable to enter the game due to a medical condition). Shaw married Marian Edwards. They had one son, Adam Shaw, born in 1950, himself a writer of magazine articles and non-fiction.

Shaw enlisted in the U.S. Army and was a warrant officer during World War II.He served with an Army documentary film unit. The Young Lions, Shaw's first novel, was published in 1949. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 film.

Shaw's second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. He was among those who signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo convictions for contempt of Congress, resulting from hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Falsely accused of being a communist by the Red Channels publication, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe, where he lived for 25 years, mostly in Paris and Switzerland. He later claimed that the blacklist "only glancingly bruised" his career. During the 1950s he wrote several more screenplays, including Desire Under the Elms (based on Eugene O'Neill's play) and Fire Down Below (about a tramp boat in the Caribbean).

While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown (1956), Two Weeks in Another Town (1960), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled Beggarman, Thief) and Evening in Byzantium (made into a 1978 TV movie). Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries in 1976.

His novel Top of the Hill, about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, was made into a TV movie, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau, and Sonny Bono.

His last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters (1981) and Acceptable Losses (1982).

Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16, 1984, aged 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.

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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Richard Derus.
4,208 reviews2,269 followers
February 28, 2020
**THIS IS A REVIEW OF The Girls in Their Summer Dresses ALONE**

"What do you want, a fight?"
"No," Frances said so unhappily that Michael felt terribly sorry for her. "I don't want a fight. I don't know why I started this. All right, let's drop it. Let's have a good time."

...and a marriage ends.

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses is about that most dreadful of moments: "You won't change." Won't in every sense, understand, will not can not refuse to; a pain like no other ever experienced by the hopeful one. This is it, this is what I signed up for, what I got, what use in pretending it's only for now because it's for good & ever.

Pain is power, the hopeful one learns; or the lucky hopeful one does. Frances has this one awful moment, Shaw gave her six pages to moult from her larval to pupal phase, and now? Now does she start planning her escape from the pain of being Mrs. Right Now instead of Mrs. Right? Or does she bend herself into a new, more accommodating shape while she works out how not to break?

Every marriage that lasts is more than one relationship. The same faces, or almost, and the same jokes, wines, music, only the bedrock shifts and the landscape settles into new angles. Better or worse, sickness or health, happy or contented with the status quo, all are valid and each is true to different degrees to the different, often differing, partners.

But it hurts when the world reshapes itself into the new reality. Shaw knew that, and told us so, made us feel it, in six pages first published on the fourth of February, 1939, in The New Yorker. It's possibly his best-known piece of short fiction, and I think rightly so. What a feat of compression! Three thousand words and the people we met leaving the Brevoort are utterly different as they drink brandy in an Eighth Street bar.

Want a blast from the past? Watch this twenty-minute short of the story from the 1980s starring Jeff Bridges as Michael. That iteration of the Village was *my* New York, so it was doubly poignant to me, and while it's not genius-level filmmaking it is a solid, faithful presentation of a solid, faithful slice of life that many, many of us can relate to.
Profile Image for Candace .
310 reviews46 followers
August 9, 2022


A husband and wife take a walk in New York City on a Sunday morning.

The wife notices the husband looking at another woman and yes, of course, she asks him about this habit of his, his habit of looking at pretty girls dressed up in pretty things.

He eventually opens up in detail about this habit….

(Oh no, don’t say more!)

And the wife responds with….

(Hmmmm, and how is this productive?)

They decide to….

(That is probably what a lot of people decide to do. Right? But no, not really right, right? )


A short conversation packed with a ton of stuff. Themes around the drudgery of marriage (for Some!), the superficial versus the true, not making waves, not facing the music, going along with the Jones’s, drinking too much on a Sunday morning whilst having a heavy discussion with one’s spouse (geez) and many more.
Loved this story.
Free online.


24 reviews2 followers
November 1, 2013
The plot of the story is Mike and Frances are walking down a street. Mike keeps looking at all the women that they walk by. Frances yells at him and he apologizes. Then they walk down another street. Mike does the same thing as before and looks at the women that they pass. Frances yells at him again. Then they walk into a bar and Mike explains why he looks at other women.

There are three characters in this story. Mike is a guy and is France's husband. He looks at other girls that he sees. Frances is a girl and is Mike’s wife. Doesn't like that Mike looks at other girls. Waiter smiles a lot.

The setting took place in the 20th century. It took place first on 5th avenue. Next it takes place in 8th avenue. Then it takes place in a bar. This impacts the story by telling you what happens as they go to the bar.

The recommended audience that should read this is 18-40 years old. It should be that age because it would be easier to understand if you were in a relationship like they are. That or they should be married. It doesn't matter what gender you should be to read this because it affects both. I would recommend this book to people who are married or in a relationship.
Profile Image for Sonee.
16 reviews2 followers
September 29, 2022
There are so many layers to this story. I don't know if it talks more about distrust or objectification.
The protagonist attempts to reclaim her time with her husband by asking just for a day by themselves.
The husband falls back to his habits and nonchalantly accepts his behaviour like it is a right of a man to stare at women like they're mere objects. There was a point where the husband describes what kind of women he likes to look at- it almost felt like it was the author talking and not a character he wrote.
Clearly, she's bothered by his habit, as it seems this isn't the first time she's having this conversation with him. However she still isn't able to do anything with his reply. She doesn't leave, she doesn't threaten to either, even after her husband clearly says he might leave her someday.
However the fact that this story was written in in early 1900s gives us some insight as to why his behaviour was put up with without any consequences.
Once the whole conversation is over, it is clear she gives up any hope on reclaiming her space with her husband and gives up on spending any time with him.
Profile Image for Jan.
447 reviews15 followers
February 28, 2020
That was painful. Because... true. I am a coward and I never want to feel that kind of pain. Hence, I never got married. Something in me knows that any "he" will eventually "make a move."
Profile Image for Yomna Saber.
392 reviews115 followers
October 11, 2022
Amazing writing, the way he depicts the tiniest details is both realistic and impressive, and his characters are equally convincing. I love it
1
Profile Image for Sahory.
63 reviews
October 12, 2023
si mi esposo me dijera que le gusta ver otras mujeres porque se les hacen bonitas, me hubiera matado enfrente de él
Profile Image for Kimberly Girkin.
28 reviews1 follower
October 12, 2024
This story is craaaazy. I hate lust and vanity and sex sooo much omg. No gender is safe.
Profile Image for Linda.
1,026 reviews13 followers
March 14, 2023
The story is available for free on the classicshorts.com website:
https://www.classicshorts.com/stories...

Michael and Frances are a married couple taking a stroll on a Sunday morning in New York City. They have been married a few years but not so long that they take each other for granted. However, Michael has a bad habit of staring at every pretty girl that crosses their path. Frances finally decides to have it out with him.

My gut reaction to Michael's behavior was "what a creep". He goes on and on about women's body parts as if they are putting themselves on display just for him. He doesn't even consider changing his behavior even when Frances reveals how much it hurts her.
Profile Image for Juliana.
72 reviews2 followers
Read
May 11, 2023
Memorable, atrapante, divertido y doloroso. Masterclass de cómo escribir un cuentazo.

Frances se desmorona ante nuestros ojos y ante la mirada conchuda de su marido. Todo el texto se siente como una obra de teatro porque ambos están interpretando los papeles que sienten que deben ocupar. Y al final a ambos, tan distintos, los une la resignación. Una resignación que es incluso despojada de la dignidad honrosa de la tragedia; el asunto resulta, en cambio, lamentablemente cómico.
Profile Image for Nikolay.
46 reviews12 followers
July 22, 2012
Easy to read book. Most of the stories are kind of related to the image of a man losing love. I liked The Eighty-Yard Run and In the French Style the best. In my opinion, they represent the helplessness a man can find himself feeling when he is unable to do anything about the woman he wants to be with.
A nice book to relax with on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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