THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

by Rona Jaffe ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Caroline Bender, just graduated from Radcliffe and still suffering from being jilted by her fiance, takes a job as a typist at a publishing company in New York. Two other girls start there the same week--Gregg a young out-of-work actress and April, fresh from Colorado--naive and beautiful. This is the story of three years in their lives with side excursions into the careers of other and more typical working girls. Caroline by talent and shrewdness rises to an editorial position, has a brief office romance with a married man, dates a worthy young lawyer who wishes to marry her and then throws everything aside when her first love returns. Gregg, her roommate, also falls in love with an older man, but her affair leads to a nervous breakdown and death. April becomes a sophisticate in appearance but remains an innocent at heart who is naive enough to believe her socialite beau will marry her. The shock of his cynical refusal leads to a fling of promiscuity until she is rescued by a nice young man from her home town. But things aren't that simple for Caroline--her returned love doesn't have marriage in mind and she runs off to Las Vegas with a business acquaintance, a Hollywood star with an international reputation as a rake. An ambitious and competent first novel, this suffers from its emotional coolness and impassive objectivity- strange attitudes on the part of a novelist whose characters are so much concerned and confused by matters of the heart. Nevertheless this should please those readers who like expose novels with a presumably serious theme.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 0143035290

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958

Categories: FICTION