Summer at Tiffany is Marjorie Hart's delightful, fast, fun, nostalgic memoir of the summer of 1945, when she and her best friend, Marty Garrett, traveled to New York City for the summer and became the first women to ever work at Tiffany's. (Yes, as in, little blue box baubles.) Not only did she and Marty make history becoming the first women ever hired at the iconic flagship, but they also had a front row seat the V-E Day and V-J Day celebrations that punctuated the beginning and end of the summer. In between, they flirted with sailors, rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, worried over news from the Pacific, and experienced the joys and perils of life in the big city, a day at the ocean, and so much more.
The idea to spend the summer in New York came from some of Marjorie and Marty's Kappa sisters at the University of Iowa. Convinced it would be easy to find jobs as shop girls in the best department stores, Marjorie and Marty take the train east, only to be turned away from a succession of top stores. Through a combination of grit, pluck, luck, and a fortuitous reference through a previously-unknown family connection, they land jobs as pages where everyone from Judy Garland to the Windsors to the top mafiosos shop.
Remarkable as the stories about Tiffany are, it's the overriding sense of an era, the zeitgesit, that sets this memoir apart. The little details - about fashion, news reports, food, curfews, college songs, and attending church - are in many ways the heart of the book. I tore through this in a couple of nights, and it left me wanting more. It also left me a bit awed by Hart herself, who the internet tells me is 95 and still going strong. She's even on Twitter, which is more than I can say.
Five stars, for the book, and the author.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Saturday, July 27, 2019
The Secret Life of Violet Grant
A friend shared The Secret Life of Violet Grant with me as her summer reading recommendation; happily, it had been on my list long enough that my turn on the library's waitlist came up just a week later. And what a great recommendation - I loved, loved, loved every page of this book, which is especially notable since I'm often ambivalent at best about dual-narrative fiction. So.
Narrative 1: It's 1964 and Vivian Schuyler, recent college graduate and aspiring writer (but current lackey) at New York's "Metropolitan" magazine receives a package, which turns out to be a suitcase addressed to Violet Grant, a great-aunt whose existence was heretofore unknown to Vivian. What's more the suitcase once belonged to Violet, who was last heard from 50 years earlier in pre-(first) world war Europe. Curiosity sparked, Vivian determines to unravel the mystery of who Violet Grant was and why her suitcase has re-appeared in New York.
Narrative 2: It's 1912-14 and Violet Schuyler Grant has defied all expectations for her class and gender by moving to England to pursue scientific studies at Oxford. Seduced by a fellow scientist, they marry and move to Berlin, where they have front-row seats to preparations for war. As the continent heads for calamity, Violet is drawn further into the orbit of a mysterious British army officer who formerly studied with her husband.
Beatriz Williams has written both of these narratives beautifully, and each is so complete that it could have comprised a lovely little read on its own. She has also carefully crafted the intersection of the two stories so that in the end The Secret Life of Violet Grant comes together perfectly. Williams gets bonus points for her epilogue, with an unexpected twist, which is always the most welcome kind.
Five stars.
Narrative 1: It's 1964 and Vivian Schuyler, recent college graduate and aspiring writer (but current lackey) at New York's "Metropolitan" magazine receives a package, which turns out to be a suitcase addressed to Violet Grant, a great-aunt whose existence was heretofore unknown to Vivian. What's more the suitcase once belonged to Violet, who was last heard from 50 years earlier in pre-(first) world war Europe. Curiosity sparked, Vivian determines to unravel the mystery of who Violet Grant was and why her suitcase has re-appeared in New York.
Narrative 2: It's 1912-14 and Violet Schuyler Grant has defied all expectations for her class and gender by moving to England to pursue scientific studies at Oxford. Seduced by a fellow scientist, they marry and move to Berlin, where they have front-row seats to preparations for war. As the continent heads for calamity, Violet is drawn further into the orbit of a mysterious British army officer who formerly studied with her husband.
Beatriz Williams has written both of these narratives beautifully, and each is so complete that it could have comprised a lovely little read on its own. She has also carefully crafted the intersection of the two stories so that in the end The Secret Life of Violet Grant comes together perfectly. Williams gets bonus points for her epilogue, with an unexpected twist, which is always the most welcome kind.
Five stars.
Friday, July 12, 2019
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser's meticulously researched Prairie Fires took me back to the reading of my youth, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. The project is immense, as Fraser takes on not only the life of Wilder, but her family history, that of her husband, and then their daughter, but also covers such sweeping territory as the Indian Wars, the New Deal, and the suffrage movement - essentially the entire landscape of Wilder's life.
The most engaging parts of the book are those that deal with Wilder herself, and particularly the ways in which her life, though the basis for the Little House books, actually differed from it. (I was most intrigued by the ways in which she chose to polish and preserve her parents for posterity.) Fraser fills in many blanks, and also allows readers to follow Wilder out of the prairies and into the Ozarks, where she spent the better part of six decades. (By the end of her life, Wilder had been a southerner much longer than she'd been a pioneer!)
More than anything, Prairie Fires brought home succinctly just how recent pioneer days were in the grand scheme of time. I found myself returning time and again to the fact that original pioneers/settlers were still alive when my parents were learning to walk. Granted, those still living had been riding in the wagon and not driving it, but all the same.
Fraser also presents food for thought with her examination of the psyche of Wilder and many like her: forced to depend on government "handouts" they resented the government all the more for it. Such perspectives bear consideration in today's time as much as they did in times past.
Prairie Fires starts rather slowly, and Fraser's work is sometimes a bit too deep in the weeds, particularly regarding the wanderings and politics of Wilder's only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, but on the whole this is a worthy read for fans of Wilder who are interested in discovering the woman behind the myth.
Four stars.
The most engaging parts of the book are those that deal with Wilder herself, and particularly the ways in which her life, though the basis for the Little House books, actually differed from it. (I was most intrigued by the ways in which she chose to polish and preserve her parents for posterity.) Fraser fills in many blanks, and also allows readers to follow Wilder out of the prairies and into the Ozarks, where she spent the better part of six decades. (By the end of her life, Wilder had been a southerner much longer than she'd been a pioneer!)
More than anything, Prairie Fires brought home succinctly just how recent pioneer days were in the grand scheme of time. I found myself returning time and again to the fact that original pioneers/settlers were still alive when my parents were learning to walk. Granted, those still living had been riding in the wagon and not driving it, but all the same.
Fraser also presents food for thought with her examination of the psyche of Wilder and many like her: forced to depend on government "handouts" they resented the government all the more for it. Such perspectives bear consideration in today's time as much as they did in times past.
Prairie Fires starts rather slowly, and Fraser's work is sometimes a bit too deep in the weeds, particularly regarding the wanderings and politics of Wilder's only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, but on the whole this is a worthy read for fans of Wilder who are interested in discovering the woman behind the myth.
Four stars.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
The Water is Wide
The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy's memoir of a year teaching in a sea islands school off the coast of South Carolina circa 1969, is a fascinating glimpse into the lives and conditions of the people on little Yamacraw Island (the fictional name of Daufuskie Island).
Conroy is young and more than a little idealistic when he arrives on Yamacraw/Daufuskie to teach the island's children, virtually all of whom are black, poor, descended directly from the slaves who worked the island's plantations, and have never journeyed farther than Savannah, some 13 miles away. Though Conroy is teaching the upper grades (5-8), he discovers within the first week that a plurality of his students can neither read nor write, and some are unable to recite the alphabet or add 1+1.
Conroy quickly adapts his teaching methods, working to gain the trust of the children and their families, while incurring the ire of the other teacher, Mrs. Brown, who is most distressed at his refusal to employ corporal punishment. Throughout the year Conroy butts head repeatedly with both Brown and the district heads on mainland South Carolina; this combined with his total racial tolerance and outright support of school integration, ultimately dooms his cause and the district fires him after the first year.
The Water is Wide is inspiring and depressing in equal measures, and makes Tony Danza's year in Philadelphia look like a walk in the park. Conroy brings to life not only his students but the ways of the Gullah people and a tiny forgotten corner of the country. In that way, I was regularly reminded of Chesapeake Requiem, another island whose way of life is quickly being upended.
Five stars.
Conroy is young and more than a little idealistic when he arrives on Yamacraw/Daufuskie to teach the island's children, virtually all of whom are black, poor, descended directly from the slaves who worked the island's plantations, and have never journeyed farther than Savannah, some 13 miles away. Though Conroy is teaching the upper grades (5-8), he discovers within the first week that a plurality of his students can neither read nor write, and some are unable to recite the alphabet or add 1+1.
Conroy quickly adapts his teaching methods, working to gain the trust of the children and their families, while incurring the ire of the other teacher, Mrs. Brown, who is most distressed at his refusal to employ corporal punishment. Throughout the year Conroy butts head repeatedly with both Brown and the district heads on mainland South Carolina; this combined with his total racial tolerance and outright support of school integration, ultimately dooms his cause and the district fires him after the first year.
The Water is Wide is inspiring and depressing in equal measures, and makes Tony Danza's year in Philadelphia look like a walk in the park. Conroy brings to life not only his students but the ways of the Gullah people and a tiny forgotten corner of the country. In that way, I was regularly reminded of Chesapeake Requiem, another island whose way of life is quickly being upended.
Five stars.
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