Krishna
This was a cult classic and was a rage when it was published way back in 1979. Today, it reads differently, at least for me. You judge for yourself.
Anne is bored of her tiny city and goes to New York to be released from the predictable life of a housewife with strict obedience to a man she does not even love. She finds a job as a secretary and works for a nice man.
Emily dates a man (Allan Cooper) who seems to be boring but a struggling salesman and treats her with kindness while many in the company chase her. The boy toy Lyon Burke comes back to the company making every woman swoon there. She discovers that Allen Cooper, who she thought was a down and out salesman is really a very rich man and wants to marry her. She, however is not in love with him, and says so to Allan’s father Gino.
Meanwhile she discovers the “soft” side of Lyon Burke and also discovers that Henry Bellamy is in love with her. (She, according to the story, is incredibly beautiful.) It gets interesting when Allan Cooper takes it for granted that she will marry him and she fights back to preserve her independent decision making. No one else can understand why she does not like to marry a catch like Allen Cooper.
She is in love with Lyon but he is a playboy and everyone feels she will be hurt by him. She befriends Helen Lawson despite everyone telling her that Helen is a bitch.
Helen is after Gino but he is uninterested. The story takes a big turn towards boredom with Emily sticking up for Helen despite what you can see as a spoiled brat behaviour by Helen and also about Allen finally pressing her to move the relationship forward. It is the usual confused melee and the lovely flow of the story stalls abruptly. She finds a part for Neely.
Then the story gets too boring with Emily and Lyon expressing love and doubt and love. The nice and easy storytelling descends into the run of the mill pulp romance.
Lyon one day simply disappears to ‘write his story’. Jennifer marries Tony Palar only to discover that she is a trapped wife and he is a boy in is brains and Mariam, the sister, controls everything. Neely is seeing wild success but Mel, her boyfriend feels as useless as Jennifer. Emotional ragweed blows all over the story landscape.
Neely becomes the most sought after star and then crashes. Everyone starts sleeping around Jennifer sleeps with a French man even though she knows he is using her and goes to Paris to be a porn star. Neely has a succession of husbands, all of whom fail her. She goes to prescription drugs and drink in desperation. Her husband sleeps around with a young thing (before being kicked out) and even her producer sleeps with a young star who he wants to supplant Neely.
The uptight, initially virginal Emily sleeps around with Gillian, even though she does not ‘feel the passion’. So on and so forth.. The book steadily goes downhill fast.
Everyone also struggles through life. Jen making it, losing it, doing porn in France, coming back to conquer America and just when she finally found the love of her life with a Senator, everything unraveling (breast cancer) and unwilling to face mastectomy, ends her life.
Neely keeps wrecking her life, getting repeatedly suicidal and finally is checked into a mental correction facility.
When Lyon comes back Emily goes right back to have sex with him, abandoning Kevin who stuck by her all his life without a second thought. All the girls thus seem to behave in a weird and unpredictable, almost cruel way to everyone around them and this seems to be a human emotional frailty? Spare me the explanations, please. They all seem to be extremely nasty.
What a pessimistic book it is! It was considered a cult classic in the late seventies, like I said in my preamble but if the author is trying to explain the strengths and weaknesses of three women (Ann, Jennifer and Neely) what we get are three selfish, conniving, manipulative, vindictive women who behave like totally spoilt, ungrateful, vicious brats and kind of get what they deserve. Even the men in the book (Lyon for instance) are sleaze bags. It is all very depressing, but not in a very good way either. The ending is equally depressing and abrupt.
4/10
– – Krishna