The Dollhouse

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis   368 pages

In the last month or so, I was lucky enough to snag a copy of author Fiona Davis’s new book, “The Masterpiece,” and I just loved it. So of course, since that was only her third novel, I knew that I had to read her first two. This was Davis’ debut novel. It’s as equally mesmerizing.

Davis employed the dualing timelines as her structure. I’m wondering if this is going to be a continued pattern for her; I sure hope so, as I love it.

In 1952, Darby arrives from Ohio to attend the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. She plans to never marry and strives for financial and economic independence from her mother and step-father.  She moves into the Barbizon Hotel for Women. It wasn’t like a hotel that we think of today. She had to have three references in order to be even considered a place. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for her on the floor that houses other Gibbs’ girls. Instead, she is forced to live with aspiring models, who often distract her from her studies.

Darby becomes friends with the maid, Esme, who introduces her to the seedier side of New York. She also meets Sam, a cook in a jazz club who yearns to become a chef, using the spices he discovered in Southeast Asia.

Fast forward to 2016. The Barbizon Hotel for Women is now condos, except for the Fourth Floor. That’s where several of the now-elderly women from the Barbizon still reside. Rose and her divorced lover, Griff, have lived there for about a year. Thanks to Patrick the doorman, Rose learns about the women and the building’s history, especially the scandal that caused Esme to fall to her death from the rooftop terrace. Working for an internet news bureau called WordMerge, Rose wants to interview the women of the Fourth Floor.

She begins to knock on doors and finds some women wanting to talk with her; others who are not interested in bringing up the past. One of those women is Darby. Yup that Darby. As Rose is forced out of her apartment (Griff goes back to his wife, supposedly for a teenager’s sake), she becomes more and more obsessed with Darby and the rumors of her involvement with Esme’s death. It’s just happenstance that Darby winds up caring for Darby’s dog when the neighbor suddenly takes ill and is hospitalized.

I was enthralled with the story; I couldn’t put it down. Can’t wait to get my hands on Davis’s sophomore book, “The Address.”  “The Dollhouse” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger   240 pages

A copy of this literary classic has been languishing on my shelf for years, so that’s why I chose it as my July read for my 2018 Reading Resolution (I picked 12 books to read that having been in my library for ages). Most people I know had to read this in high school, but growing up in Arkansas, we didn’t have summer reading lists.

And now I know why I’ve been putting it off for years…what a drag of a story. I realize that the story is only three days and nights in the life of sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, but omg, what a whiner.

There is one consolation to this story of Holden’s New York adventures after he gets expelled from yet another prep school: teenage angst has changed since Salinger published this in 1951. The biggest difference is that instead of goddamn, teenagers today use the F-bomb and the MF word. 

And the way he called every "old [their name]," drove me up a wall.

 “Catcher in the Rye” receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Ex-Friends

Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer by Norman Podhoretz, 233 pages

This is political commentator and literary critic Norman Podhoretz's memoir of how political and aesthetic disagreements destroyed his friendships with some of the luminaries of the '50s New York literary and intellectual scene.  This sometimes amounts to a gossipy settling of scores - Podhoretz seems to have a perfect memory when it comes to put-downs, and clearly treasured many of the attacks against him as personal badges of honor - but more often is accompanied by what seems to be genuine affection and equally genuine pain and regret.  At a minimum, it is a lively account of what it was like to be an ambitious young New York intellectual at a time when it seemed as if New York was the capital of the cultural world.

The Dollhouse

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis.  304 pages.  Due to be published in August, 2016 (I read an e-galley of this book).

Alternating between present-day and 1950’s New York City, this novel shows readers the world of the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women, where a generation of aspiring modern women lived side-by-side in the 1950’s.  Journalist Rose Lewin, in her beautiful apartment in the modern-day Barbizon, doesn’t have any idea of the rich history of the building or its residents.  However, when her personal life takes a swerve and she encounters some of her neighbors who were original residents of the Barbizon, she decides to learn more about them.  In the process, she starts to unravel a secret that has been smoldering since 1952.  Is her elderly neighbor Darby who she says she is?  Once Rose begins her investigation into the past, it becomes clear that there’s more to the story than she originally thought.

This is a story that clearly paints the world of 1950s New York City without skipping over some of the seamier details.  It would have been easy to have a story where all of the girls at the Barbizon were beautiful and happy, and New York City was a glitter-filled place.  However, the reality was that life wasn’t easy for these girls, and there was a seedier side to the city.  For example, jazz was intoxicating, but heroin was part of that reality.  I appreciated that the story was realistic, and it was easy to become pulled in to the book.  The characters are interesting and relatable (and at times, very frustrating), and combined with the steadily increasing pace, this was a pageturner that left me wanting to know more about 1950s New York City.  This is one of the appeals of well-written historical fiction, in that it leaves you wanting to learn more once you start reading.  

Searching for Grace Kelly

Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan
(161 pages read of 399)

"For a small-town girl with big-city dreams, there is no address more glamorous than New York's Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate, Dolly, comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. Vivian, a brash British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel's rules, rounds out the trio of friends. Together, the girls embark on a journey of discovery that will take them from the penthouse apartments of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City's Steel Pier -- and into the arms of very different men who will alter their lives forever. "

Makes Sex and the City look like an in-depth character study.  The book could have been so much more than it was.