- Mass Market Paperback: 277 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group; Reprint edition (30 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0553214594
- ISBN-13: 978-0553214598
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 10.7 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,745,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rocking-chairs and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over the new chintz-covered easy chair and the gray velure sofa over everything everywhere, was the familiar coating of smoke and grime... Yet here was not fault of housewifery; the curse could not be lifted, as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork proved. The grime was perpetually renewed; scrubbing only ground it in." from the novel
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
This is Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Alice Adams. Tarkington was, in his day, one of the most popular American novelists, with The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appearing on the annual best-seller lists nine times. His works included The Gentleman from Indiana, Monsieur Beaucaire, The Two Vanrevels, Penrod, The Turmoil, Seventeen, The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Gentle Julia, The Midlander, The Plutocrat, Claire Ambler, Penrod Jashber, Mirthful Haven, Mary's Neck, and Presenting Lily Mars.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Alice Adams was funny and definitely some good quality writing. At first I thought it might be too old-fashioned since it was written in the early 1900's, but when I read it I was able to compare Alice's desire to be popular to teenage girls today. My only negative thought about this book is that some characters especially the mother, repeated things a lot. The mother had several lines that she said at least 5 times throughout the book, and that was somewhat annoying. Otherwise the book was great!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
18 reviews
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
The smell of boiling Brussels sprouts can dissolve any daydream.
9 Jan 2006
Format:Paperback
The growing pangs experienced by the United States during the first couple decades of the twentieth century provided the literary fodder for a whole new school of American authors. William Dean Howells, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Poole, Theodore Dreiser and Henry James all added their comments regarding the dissolution of traditional American values by the rise of industrialization, capital accumulation, and the strengthening of a caste system based on wealth rather than on family name. Booth Tarkington treated this subject in his The Magnificent Ambersons, but added an interesting twist: the scene of this novel was not set in the large industrial and financial cities of the East, but in a mid-sized Midwestern city as if to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this social and cultural revolution.
With this novel, Tarkington takes his demonstration one step further by writing about a middle class household in that same mid-sized Midwestern city. The Adams family, although comfortable enough, is excluded from the exclusivity shared by those families that are bound together by either name or wealth. Alice Adams is particularly chagrinned by this fact and atempts to imitate the actions and tastes of this exclusive group but can only act out daydreams in which she achieves the happiness and love that she desperately seeks. When she finally meets Arthur Russell, an elibible bachelor who belongs to that exlusive group, and futhermore, has a genuine affection for Alice, she can only fabricate lies in which she hopes to raise her own social station in his eyes. It is these pitiful, but humorous, attempts that give the novel much of its life and brilliance.
Tarkington does a fine job in developing his characters: the romantic yet incorrigible Alice; her scheming and henpecking mother, who although acting for what she sees as Alice's own betterment, brings the family to ruin; her henpecked father who falls prey to his own duplicity and fanciful ambitions; and her brother who has sense enough to see through the banality of what Alice is trying to do, only to fall victim to his own weaknesses. Although this novel won Takington his second Pulitzer Prize, it is not as well known as The Magnificent Ambersons; however, it is in every way the earlier novel's equal. His depiction of middle class society during the 1920's is judicious, balancing satire with the author's own sympathetic treatment of character. The major highlight of the novel is Tarkington's brilliant description of the dinner at which the Adams family attempts to impress Arthur Russell, a scene which makes the reader simultaneously squirm and laugh out loud.
Without giving away the ending, let it be said that the 1940s Hollywood film of the novel did Tarkington an injustice in that the filmmakers, intent on pleasing a movie audience, completely missed the point of the novel.
With this novel, Tarkington takes his demonstration one step further by writing about a middle class household in that same mid-sized Midwestern city. The Adams family, although comfortable enough, is excluded from the exclusivity shared by those families that are bound together by either name or wealth. Alice Adams is particularly chagrinned by this fact and atempts to imitate the actions and tastes of this exclusive group but can only act out daydreams in which she achieves the happiness and love that she desperately seeks. When she finally meets Arthur Russell, an elibible bachelor who belongs to that exlusive group, and futhermore, has a genuine affection for Alice, she can only fabricate lies in which she hopes to raise her own social station in his eyes. It is these pitiful, but humorous, attempts that give the novel much of its life and brilliance.
Tarkington does a fine job in developing his characters: the romantic yet incorrigible Alice; her scheming and henpecking mother, who although acting for what she sees as Alice's own betterment, brings the family to ruin; her henpecked father who falls prey to his own duplicity and fanciful ambitions; and her brother who has sense enough to see through the banality of what Alice is trying to do, only to fall victim to his own weaknesses. Although this novel won Takington his second Pulitzer Prize, it is not as well known as The Magnificent Ambersons; however, it is in every way the earlier novel's equal. His depiction of middle class society during the 1920's is judicious, balancing satire with the author's own sympathetic treatment of character. The major highlight of the novel is Tarkington's brilliant description of the dinner at which the Adams family attempts to impress Arthur Russell, a scene which makes the reader simultaneously squirm and laugh out loud.
Without giving away the ending, let it be said that the 1940s Hollywood film of the novel did Tarkington an injustice in that the filmmakers, intent on pleasing a movie audience, completely missed the point of the novel.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Excellent Tarkington Novel
19 Jan 2000
Format:Hardcover
One of the better Tarkington tales I've read. An upbeat and at times humorous story about a middle class family and their two early 20-year-old children ( one boy and one girl ). The girl, Alice Adams, is the focus of the story, as she struggles to be liked by the town's society folks. She doesn't have the social prestige nor the money to attract many beaus.
This leads to turmoil, and Mrs. Adams tells her husband to leave the mediocre paying job he's had all his life to start his own company so they can be rich and pay their children "advantages". He does this, after many trepidations, but the basis of his newfound business is a stolen glue formula from his previous employer. This ultimately leads to his demise.
There is a bit more to this story, but all in all, it is a story of class envy, snobbery, and greed. Tarkington's main point, however, seems to be that every dark tunnel of life ultimately has some other exit that inevatibly lead to light -- as even in the Adams's darkest hour their was hope yet.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Another obscure gem
25 Aug 2004
Format:Paperback
The Magnificent Ambersons introduced me to the non-Penrose side of Tarkington. "Alice" is a timeless novel of American middle-class youth striving to be something different and their infatuation with wealth and popularity. Brilliant description of how this clouds judgment and leads to self-deception. Another theme is that the daughter achieves a more mature self-awareness when the parents especially the mother release their own self-deceptions. Excellent portrait of growing up in middle class America, the pitfalls and the optimism; still relevant for today. Every high school student should read this book; wait to read Anna Karenina for college. As to another reader's criticism, imagine a mother repeating herself; just inconceivable!
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