The Last Lovely City

Book excerpt: “Sophisticated, charming, often nostalgic, and so artfully written that half the time you don’t know that you are reading on of the best writers around.” ­--The Boston Globe In her final collection, Alice Adams ranges from San Francisco to a North Carolina college town, to a run-down resort in Mexico. And a grouping of four stories at the end follows a divorced psychiatrist in an arc that constitutes a short novel. Included are: “His Women,” “Great Sex,” “Old Love Affairs,” and “The Drinking Club,” “Patients, “The Wrong Mexico, “ and “Earthquake Damage.”