Vintage novels can provide insights into contemporary events that are too big for us to understand as they happen.
In his 1936-bestselling novel White Banners, Lloyd C. Douglas ends his story as the Depression is starting.
Douglas has Lydia Edmunds ask her banker on Nov. 12, 1929 if the country’s financial condition is as bad as the [...]
Archive for October, 2008
Financial insight from vintage novels
Posted in 1936 Bestselling Novels, tagged economy, The Depression, Wall Street on October 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Annie Spragg Is Understated Gem
Posted in 1928 Bestselling Novels, My Top Pics, Psychological novel, Religious, Suspense, tagged cults, Louis Bromfield, religion, saints, Stigmata on October 22, 2008 | Comments Off
If you can imagine a novel written by Alfred Hitchcock, you’ll understand the fascination of Louis Bromfield’s 1928 bestseller The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg.Bromfield increases the fascination of the story by his squeaky-clean presentation. Readers grasping for clues can’t be sure whether the sordid story they infer is in the material or in their own dirty minds.
Jalna Is a Sordid Bore
Posted in 1928 Bestselling Novels, tagged Canada, Jalna, Ontario, Whiteoaks on October 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Jalna reads as if it were written by someone whose day job is writing Cliff Notes. If there ever was any life in these characters or sense in the plot, it’s not here now.
Claire Ambler Is Seriously Funny
Posted in 1928 Bestselling Novels, Humor, Juvenile/Youth, Psychological novel, tagged coming-of-age novel on October 8, 2008 | Comments Off
Booth Tarkington makes Claire both a typical adolescent and a district person. Readers can — and will — laugh at Claire’s self-absorption. But they will realize long before she does that it’s not funny. . . . An inability to see other people as people, “not just something . . . to use,” is the root of most human misery.
Bad Girl suffers chronic depression
Posted in 1928 Bestselling Novels, Juvenile/Youth, Psychological novel, tagged permarital sex, teen parents, unwed mother on October 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Dot meets Eddie Collins at a dance. The first time they have sex, Eddie says he’ll take off work the next day and marry her. Within weeks she learns she’s pregnant with a child neither she nor Eddie is ready to have.
