Women with Men: Three Stories was published by Knopf in 1997. The three stories are long enough to be novellas: “The Womanizer” (an American in Paris whose infidelity is destroying everything around him), “Jealous” (a Montana boy sent to stay with his aunt while his mother pursues a new relationship), and “Occidentals” (an American couple in Paris whose marriage is collapsing).
The Paris stories are Ford’s exploration of Americans abroad — people whose dislocations at home follow them to Europe, where the unfamiliar setting strips away the comforting routines that normally conceal their failures. “The Womanizer” is particularly devastating: Austin, a soft-spoken American in Paris on business, begins an affair with a French woman and cannot understand why everyone (his wife, his lover, himself) is destroyed by an act he considers minor. Ford demonstrates that Austin’s inability to comprehend the consequences of his actions is not innocence but a characteristic American failure of moral imagination.
“Jealous” — told from a boy’s perspective — is the collection’s most compressed and powerful story: a teenage boy observing adult behavior he cannot fully understand but registering its emotional truth with absolute precision. The novella form suits Ford: it allows him the space for the accumulation of detail that his method requires while maintaining the narrative pressure of the short story.
Collecting Women with Men
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1997): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Signed: $30–$60
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Three Novellas
Women with Men (1997) collects three long stories — “The Womanizer,” “Jealous,” and “Occidentals” — each exploring the failures and confusions of American men in their relationships with women. Two of the three are set in Paris, which Ford renders with an outsider’s acute eye. The stories are vintage Ford: men who cannot quite connect, who observe themselves failing with a mixture of bewilderment and passive acceptance. The collection appeared between Independence Day and The Lay of the Land in Ford’s career.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does this fit in Ford’s work? It bridges the gap between the Pulitzer-winning Independence Day and the longer novels that followed. The novellas are among Ford’s finest short-form work, particularly “The Womanizer.”