Well, I finished it yesterday afternoon. A few things I forgot to mention:

There’s a scene in a drugstore when Henry first gets back from Paris. Three little girls are sitting at the counter. The first orders a chocolate sundae. The second orders a pineapple soda with chocolate ice cream. The third says, “I think I’ll have a douche. Mamma says they are so refreshing.”

I just thought that was funny because it showed more of a risque sense of humor than I would have expected from Miss M.

Also: they call Coke, er, Coca-Cola, “dope”. Anyone ever heard that before?

And just for Sal: she mentions scuppernongs without explaining what they are. Hee.

Anyhow, Ilsa & Henry went to the theater to see a touring company perform a bunch of plays. Ilsa had never seen a play before and she was enthralled. They ended up meeting the lead actor, Franz, and he & Ilsa hit it off. He obviously wanted Ilsa to go with him when he left, but she didn’t.

Shortly after Franz left, Ilsa went blind and Monty drank some bad moonshine and died an agonizing death, leaving Ilsa with a mound of debt.

Then we skipped ahead in time 11 years. Ilsa took in boarders and taught piano to make ends meet. Her daughter, Brand, was now 19. Henry continued to lurk about and do nothing of substance. Also, strangely enough, although 11 years had passed, he had only aged 9 years 😉 (He was 24 in the previous section and 33 in this one, LOL. I’m not terribly surprised with this discrepancy. Miss M often makes timeline errors. She says she is bad at math and I believe her!)

Anyhow, Cousin William’s adopted son, Lorenzo, has his sights set on Brand, but Brand is afraid to leave Ilsa on her own (she thinks she will attempt suicide). One of the boarders is Joshua, a young writer. He’s written a novel, which has been sent out and rejected many times. He’s working on a second, but has basically given up, and is hiding out, unwilling to return home (he’s a Northerner) because he’s a failure. At the end of the story, his first book is accepted, and he comes back to life. Another boarder is an old teacher of Henry’s, Myra. She drinks to numb her disillusionment and is going to pieces. She’s the only character who speaks of God, and it’s in a bitter, cynical way.

Franz the actor passes through town. He’s as unsuccessful as Henry is, but at least not as stagnant. He and Ilsa are still in love, but Ilsa won’t go with him, because it would cause a scandal, and that would ruin Brand’s chances of living happily in the town. Lorenzo got a scholarship to a University in Wisconsin. Everyone expects that Brand will marry Lorenzo. I guess they expect that he will return in 4 years and she will wait.

The only people who have turned out well are Silver & Eddie (who we never see because he’s always busy working).

Henry eavesdrops on Franz and Ilsa. He tells Silver. Silver is like oh, Henry you’re so pathetic, get off your ass, stop pining over Ilsa and do something with your life! She says Eddie can get him a job if he wants it. Henry takes her up on the offer.

Violetta has become nasty and gossipy but no one has the guts to tell her to shut up and shove off. She barges in just as Franz & Ilsa are saying goodbye and ruins it and yet no one smacks her. Which is what she deserved. A good hard smack. Instead Henry walks out into the rain and gets wet.

The End.

Okay, overall, what struck me about this book. First of all, I see it a classic second novel. Her first was also classic in that it was “autobiographical”, and by that I mean not that it was about her, but it was very much based on her own real life experiences. For this book, she put it in a familiar setting (her mother was from the south and she lived there with her grandmother for a time) and I’m guessing that some of the characters were based on IRL relatives & such, but it looks like a first real attempt at plotting. Hence, a lot of melodramatic soapy elements, while at the same time the characters don’t do a whole lot.

That said, I liked it. I mean, partly that’s because I can see the context, and as a writer, I enjoyed dissecting it. She wrote her first few books while she was working as an understudy. The theater influence comes through, not just in the obvious, but also I think in the way the characters speak and act. I found this book, like others from her early years, less censored than her later efforts. That she was disillusioned with religion at this point in her life is pretty clear. And that’s interesting, considering where she went later in life.

Another reason not to dismiss it, is that the writing is strong. The characters may not be doing anything, but she does a good job of describing them doing nothing 😉 Yes, it could use tightening, but this is mostly in the realm of using the same word/phrase too many times, not horrible grammatical errors or anything.
Problems with it: Henry is the narrator, but we don’t really see him do anything except for pine over Ilsa. He doesn’t appear to have any other interests. This makes him rather one-dimensional.

Also, this book was published when she was 27/28, so I’m assuming it was written a year or so before that. It’s almost as if she didn’t know what to do with characters when they got to be older than she was at the time of writing, so she killed them off, or had them “go away”.

But honestly, I’m perplexed as to why this hasn’t been re-issued. It’s really not that bad. Think about all the crap out there! And there’s also no reason why it couldn’t have a go-round with a good editor before being re-issued (a couple of her early books were re-issued in the 80s with changes). So I don’t know. Maybe she feels it doesn’t speak for her where she is now. But that’s kind of revising history, isn’t it? Obviously this is what she believed then.

Okay, so Aunt Elizabeth’s lovechild was stillborn. End of that story, I suppose.

Ilsa married Monty & had a child. Later, she had a miscarriage, so no more kids for them. Silver married Monty’s brother, Eddie, and had 3 kids. Monty’s twin, Violetta had already married Cousin Anna’s son, Dolph. She had a miscarriage, so no kids for them. Apparently Miss M was under the impression that if one had a miscarriage, one could no longer have children.

Meanwhile, Henry was in Paris. He was gone for 8 years, through the war and after. Maybe he was hanging with Scott, Ernest, Gertrude & Ford Madox Ford. >ahem< He was supposed to be going to school & studying violin, but he was a dissipated youth, and instead took his monthly installment from daddy and spent it on the usual: wine, women, and song. Specifically, he hooked up with a distant cousin who was a nightclub singer & pawned his violin to buy her prezzies. He has a pleasant enough time with her, but naturally, he can’t get Ilsa out of his head.

So he comes home & his father’s all disappointed in him and people are variously changed and not. Monty’s letting his father’s law practice rot because he doesn’t like to work. Eddie OTOH is working his ass off. Dolph is bald. Ilsa & Monty’s marriage is unhappy, but there’s a spark between them and Henry thinks they would be happier if Ilsa was Monty’s mistress instead of his wife. They all seem kind of old & tired, but by my calculations, none of them are yet 30.

Oh yeah, and Ilsa’s going blind. They haven’t actually figured this out yet, but it will happen. Unless she dies (cough! cough! thud!) beforehand. Hee! It’s all quite melodramatic and dare I say, soapy.

I finally started reading it. The story so far…

It’s narrated by a boy named Henry Randolph Porcher. At the beginning of the story he’s 10, but where I am now, he’s 15. We jumped a few years. I’m assuming it’s going to jump ahead again at some point. It’s set in the south, near Charleston. And early in the 20th C. Where I am now there’s a comment about “you know there’s a war in Europe” and I’m assuming that’s WWI. Earlier, they were still using carriages & cars sounded like “newfangled” items.

Anyhoo– in the beginning Henry has “run away” from home & meets Ilsa Brandes & her father. He spends the day with them because he’s in trouble and he doesn’t want to go home. When they do take him home, they discover the town is on fire & Henry’s house ends up burning down. Henry & family end up living in a hotel somewhere else for 5 years until his mother croaks (literally, think cough, cough, thud) at the ripe old age of 37. Ancient, I tell you! Henry’s family is of the rich, old, inbred sort. They hate Ilsa & her father, because he was in love with one of the clan (Elizabeth), but they wouldn’t let him marry Elizabeth, because he was poor white trash, apparently, so he ran off to Europe and married Ilsa’s mother (who then promptly died in childbirth). Meanwhile, Elizabeth was >gasp< pregnant. Elizabeth is dead, dunno what happened to the baby yet.

So when Henry’s mother dies, they move back to their house, which has been rebuilt so it’s exactly the same as the old one. While they were gone, Ilsa’s father also conveniently died (no cough cough, he died of a mysterious fever), so she’s had to move in with Cousin Anna, who is I think, the only relative Henry likes. Henry’s cousin Monty has his sights set on Ilsa much to the chagrin of Henry’s sister Silver. Henry hates Monty so he’s pissed off on several levels because of course he likes Ilsa.

Well that’s about it so far. Possible controversial bits:

In the opening part, Ilsa & Henry go swimming… without bathing suits (she’s 13, he’s 10).

A lot of oblivious racism w/ regard to how the black characters are portrayed. So far there’s been a chain gang, a bunch of crazy people running away from the fire, and a lot of servants, who all talk with “Gone With the Wind” type phrasing.