Joyce Johnson 
Bad Connections 
A Novel

The award-winning author of Minor Characterswrites with delicious transparency about a love that cannot be harnessed and a woman who refuses to be deceived In the great wave of husband-leaving ushered in by the Sexual Revolution, Molly Held frees herself from her cold, flagrantly unfaithful husband after their final quarrel turns violent. With her five-year-old son, she lights out for an Upper West Side apartment and the new life she hopes to find with Conrad Schwartzbergthe charismatic radical lawyer who has recently become her lover. Having escaped from a desert, she lands in a swamp.While Conrad radiates positive energy, he is unable to tell Mollyor anyone who loves himthe truth. No longer the wronged wife, Molly now finds herself the Other Woman. She is sharing Conrad with Roberta, another refugee from marriagewith Conrad’s movements between the two of them disguised by his suspiciously frequent out-of-town engagements.Roberta either knows nothing or prefers to look the other way, but Molly’s maddening capacity for double vision takes over her mind. What saves her from herself is her well-developed sense of irony, which never fails heror the reader.