By Francis Booth | On February 11, 2022 | Updated August 28, 2022 | Comments (0)
The newly built Los Angeles suburb of Paradise in Vera Caspary’s 1961 novel Bachelor in Paradise is rather like the aspirational estate of Northridge in Caspary’s earlier story “Stranger in the House” (1943). Excerpted from A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth ©2022. Reprinted by permission.
“It is one of those suburbs distinguished in real-estate advertisements by the word exclusive. The residents spend large sums to separate themselves from neighbors whom they meet as often as possible at the Country Club . . . Pedestrians are seldom seen.”
It is also somewhat similar to the setting of Grace Metalious’s 1956 novel Peyton Place (1956), with its simmering suburban sexual tensions among the “simple, well-constructed, one-family dwellings, most of them modeled on Cape Cod lines and painted white with green trim” and to Pepper Street in Shirley Jackson’s The Road Through the Wall (1948), also set in a California suburb. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On January 31, 2022 | Updated August 28, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Pure and the Impure by Colette, a strange work first published in 1932, feels less like a novel and more like a series of loosely stitched together character sketches. Indeed it is just that, of the gay and lesbian demimondaine societies in the Paris of Colette’s time. This deep dive into The Pure and the Impure is excerpted from Text Acts: Eroticism in 20th-Century Literature, volume 2* by Francis Booth. Reprinted by permission.
All but one of the characters are unnamed but are presumably real people that Colette knew. Janet Flanner, who was Paris correspondent for The New Yorker from 1925 onwards, and published plenty of her own sketches of Paris society, said of The Pure and the Impure: Read More→
By Francis Booth | On December 24, 2021 | Updated January 28, 2025 | Comments (2)
Depictions of Jewish women in fiction or memoir by Jewish female writers prior to the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th were rare, whether in English or translation were rare gems.
Even if the works discussed ahead weren’t the most brilliant by the highest of literary standards, all are eminently readable, and completely fascinating —that is, if you’re lucky enough to find them.
Working back from Vera Caspary’s Thicker Than Water (1932) to Amy Levy’s controversial Reuben Sachs (1888), these often autobiographical novels offer gritty, realistic portraits of Jewish family and romantic life of their times. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On December 13, 2021 | Updated August 16, 2025 | Comments (0)
How was seduction, loss of virginity, unplanned pregnancy, unbidden passion, and occasional betrayal portrayed in English and American novels of nearly one hundred years ago? This sampling of stories of seduction and loss of innocence in 1920s women’s novels — by women authors — is fascinating and illuminating.
Here we’ll explore works by Vera Caspary, Viña Delmar, Ellen Glasgow, Edna Ferber, E. Arnot Robinson, and Rosamond Lehmann. Excerpted from A Girl Named Vera can Never Tell a Lie: The Novels of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth. Reprinted with permission. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On December 6, 2021 | Updated August 28, 2022 | Comments (0)
The White Girl by Vera Caspary (1929) bears comparison to several passing novels of the 1920s. “Passing” as white was a theme that fascinated authors of the 1920s, both within and outside of the Harlem Renaissance movement.
Following is an exploration of several 1920s novels of passing by Caspary and two by Jewish women writers like herself, as well as the renowned works of two Black authors of that era, Nella Larsen and Jessie Redmon Fauset.
Excerpted from A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth ©2022. Reprinted by permission.
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