Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Novels, 1922.
This book has a really good message: be yourself; don't try to pass yourself off as something you're not. When I first started the novel, I didn't really get what Alice was up to. It took awhile before I figured it out. Alice is a young woman who is desperate. She isn't getting any younger and the eligible men just aren't coming around any more. She isn't sure what the problem is but her mother is. She blames it all on their poverty. Alice must buy into her theory because she is doing her best to portray herself as the daughter of a successful, prosperous business man. She meets a very eligible man, Russell, at a dance and every time she opens her mouth another lie falls out. Whenever she meets Russell she glamorizes herself & her family; she just can't admit that her dad is a lowly clerk and that the family is just getting by. She even lies about the tobacco she is buying for her dad, unwilling to let Russell know her dad can only afford the cheapest pipe tobacco, she spins a whole tale about her dad & his cigars. Naturally, Russell eventually wises up.
This book was made into a movie starring Katherine Hepburn in the 1930s. They changed the ending, I've heard, to one the studio felt would be more acceptable to viewers.
Review from Following Pulitzer.
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