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3.0 AVERAGE
3.0 AVERAGE
blackbird27's review
3.0
Continuing to trip through the comic fiction of the first half of the twentieth century. Eric Hatch is best known for writing the novel that became the film My Man Godfrey, and so is part of screwball cinema history; this, his first novel in 1928, has its lugubrious moments, although the thematic concerns with frivolous New York socialites, wealth and its sudden loss (or gain), and the soul-deadening exigencies of labor would seem to remain a constant in his work.
(Hatch was apparently a broker and horse breeder; both the stock market and the racetrack figure prominently here, as -- a glimpse through his bibliography suggests -- they would continue to do.)
The plot is straight out of melodrama, and there are moments when the hapless, pseudo-sophisticate, thorough-naif narrator does dip his toe into those waters, but for the most part it's kept on an even, flippant level, with a neat level of epigrammatic wit that seems a trifle wasted on the material. It's not full-out screwball, but it's a step in the direction.
(Hatch was apparently a broker and horse breeder; both the stock market and the racetrack figure prominently here, as -- a glimpse through his bibliography suggests -- they would continue to do.)
The plot is straight out of melodrama, and there are moments when the hapless, pseudo-sophisticate, thorough-naif narrator does dip his toe into those waters, but for the most part it's kept on an even, flippant level, with a neat level of epigrammatic wit that seems a trifle wasted on the material. It's not full-out screwball, but it's a step in the direction.