Another lost book

Another reader in search of a long-lost teen novel.  Anyone recall this one?


I'm looking for a book where a young girl was attacked from behind, hospitalized and was sent drugged chocolates which her nurses ate.  She recovered and went home to her father, David's estate.  Her boyfriend, a photographer, turned out to be the bad guy.  Her father's partner, Blair/Bruin protected her as best he could from everything,  Something about a boat explosion at the end.  Thanks if you can help me find this book!!



 

Flair for Fashion (1967)

Flair for Fashion

Betty Ferm

1967, Julian Messner

A Career Romance for Young Moderns

Her black hair was brushed to perfection and capped her head in a casual, to the shoulder length. A new white lace blouse enlivened the dark V of her jacket, and just the right amount of powder duster the tip of her slightly tilted nose.

And thus are we introduced to Ellen Matthews, en route to New York to claim her prize from fashion school; a six-month internship with Countess Gardella at the House of Etienne. 

She gave the gown a pin-tucked shirt waist bodice with a long, cuffed sleeve. The suggested fabric to be used was chiffon, with a low-cut matching colored slip. She added a billowing skirt and indicated that the half-inch belt was to have a round buckle made of the same chiffon.

This design wins her the internship, and is later dubbed Black Magic. It not only wins Ellen her shot at New York success, it will affect all her relationships at the House of Etienne.  Starting with the Countess’s son, Tony.  Because the Countess is ill when Ellen reaches New York, and Tony is in charge.  And her introduction to Tony is to overhear him say he needs an experienced assistant, not “some callow kid who’s still wet behind the ears.”

Meanwhile, in Ellen’s personal life, she’s bunking with conveniently placed relative Aunt Laura, who lives in New York and is largely dismissed by Ellen and her cozy nuclear family for being a finicky spinster. Already interested in the Saint Louis ingénue is handsome blond ad man Bill Jennings, whose company handled the contest for the House of Etienne.  Bill’s a slick native New Yorker whose innate sneakiness fascinates and repels Ellen in equal amounts.  And of course, she ends up with a thing for her dark, suave, faintly French boss, Tony. 

Extreme amounts of clothing porn.  Ferm describes what virtually everyone is wearing in virtually every scene, and makes it clear that this is Ellen’s fascination in life.  Which is great. 

He was very handsome in a black mohair suit with a woven silk tie. He wore a French-cuffed white shirt with jeweled cuff links that matched his tie stud….

The descriptions are rather flat and overdone.  This side is rather dull, for once. 

But the motivations, and the tale of a young, rather naïve girl thinking over her instinctive reactions to various situations – those are wonderful.  At one point, Ellen giggles at the complicated process of ordering wine, and Bill tells her something she had never considered before – that the fashion world involved more than creative design, that ordering wine and being a social creature was part of the business as well.  In another fine moment, Ellen’s assumptions about a fat friend – and about her boring, old maid aunt - are exploded. Just as Ellen is mentally giving both women – one thin and colorless, the other fat and dressed in loud patterns – a makeover, fat Mrs. Boorman stuns her:

“Of course,” Mrs. Boorman remarked, as they sat down at the table, “I could look even slimmer if I wore solid colors.” Ellen almost dropped her tomato juice. It had never occurred to her that Mrs. Boorman understood that.  She had assumed the heavy-set woman chose her flamboyant clothes from a lack of judgement.

Mrs. Boorman continues that she kept up with the styles for years, obediently changing with the times to suit each era.

“Then I decided to take a stand. I picked the colorful dresses I liked best and stuck with them. My daughters are horrified, but I’m happy.”

The romances were dull, the 1960’s swinging New York scenes hysterical –

Greenwich Village was alive with activity. Ellen caught glimpses of a dungareed girl with one blond braid down her back, a thin, bearded fellow with a canvas under his arm, a couple swaying jerkily outside a nightclub to a drum beat that echoed savagely from within…

- and Ellen’s career plots were as predictable as the romances.  But the underlying characterizations were very good, and the ideas good.  The larger teen romance itself was just not good.

 

Links

Kirkus review 

 

Identify this book!

A reader emailed a book description, hoping I'd recognize their long-lost teen novel. 
 

Quick question, have you come across or do you remember a book from the 1950s set at a college campus within the fraternity/sorority system? The most significant moment from the book is the "golden couple" driving off down fraternity row and getting in a car accident that kills them both. There's a similar moment in Anne Rivers Siddons "Heartbreak Hotel" but it's not that book.

I couldn't help; it doesn't sound familiar to me.  Anyone else? 

The New Lucinda

Grace Gelvin Kisinger,

1958, Thomas Nelson & Sons

Lucinda Taylor is 16, blonde, blue-eyed and tall but as a studious, serious girl, she knows she’s not popular and she feels dull and ignored in her hometown of Exeter.  Reading a magazine article, she finds inspiration in a story about a girl who transforms the way she acts and how others think of her. Cindy wishes she could do this too, but in a town where everyone’s known her since birth, how can she?

So it’s lucky her dad is transferred to Woodmont, a town just far enough away to make Cindy’s makeover doable.  And she pulls it off.  She’s cool, she’s mildly indifferent, she’s unenthusiastic – she’s everything a popular girl should be.  Fighting her inclination to be friendly and engaged with a group of friendly girls, Cindy instead cozies up to Rose Walsh, a sleek and predatory girl, and falls wildly in infatuation with Malcolm “Mack” Gordon. But are these people, who Lucinda’s identified as the most popular kids at Woodmont, really all that desirable?

I’m a sucker for a teen novel about trying to remake yourself.  Lucinda’s likeable, the pace is good, and the resolution is satisfying.  One major flaw – Lucinda’s identification of Rose and Mack as popular kids is never seriously discussed.  Rose, in particular, seems less popular than infamous.  Is Lucinda’s perception accurate?

Paperback

il. Barbara Fox (cover)

1958, Scholastic Book Services

 

Author’s other books

The Enchanted Summer (1956)

More Than Glamour (1958)

Bittersweet Autumn (1960)

Too Late Tomorrow (1962)

Links

Kirkus review of The New Lucinda

A blog with a review of More Than Glamour

Kirkus review of The Enchanted Summer

Kirkus review of More Than Glamour

Kirkus review of Bittersweet Autumn

Kirkus review of Too Late Tomorrow 

Answer For April (1963)

Answer For April

Jan Nickerson, il (cover) Lucille Wallace

1963, Funk & Wagnalls Company, Inc.

Although the others had gone back into the house, April Anderson watched the car until it was out of sight. She knew that Margo would insist that Jeff remove the Just Married sign and the paper streamers before they left the country road and started along the thruway. Her older sister had a large share of the Anderson dignity; Jeff, being an advertising man, wouldn’t mind. If the other drivers honked at him, he would give them a big grin, but Margo would be embarrassed. April thought that she would be too, in a similar situation.

Sixteen-year-old April has just watched her older sister Margo leave the family home for the last time.  Their mother is dead, their father is an aggressively helpless man, and housekeeper Mrs. Berry isn’t enough to keep the home lights burning. April quickly learns that Margo’s been doing a lot in the past few years, and that it all falls on her now. Younger sisters Amy (14) and Pam (12) are basically hers now.  Their 19yo brother Thayer Jr. is in Germany, serving in the military, and doesn’t make an appearance.

Tall. Blonde. Suave. Hollister.  April’s been semi-flirting with boy-next-door Spencer, but is immediately intrigued to find a strange blonde boy on her front doorstep.  He’s Hollister Jones, come to get tutoring in French from her impatient father (which is never quite explained, given Thayer Armstrong’s obvious dislike of teaching and apparent financial comfort), and triggers a girl-war between April and her long-time best friend Norma. 

The war is conducted largely by Norma, who reveals such depths of malice which are all met with familiarity by April, so that you wonder why our heroine was ever friends with her.  Then again, April’s response to Norma’s jealousy is to shrug; she’s oddly cold-blooded.

April’s real agonies are reserved for her family.  Which is inevitable, given that her father suffers from Fragile Father Syndrome (attacks many fictional papas whose wives have been conveniently removed from this life by a tension-heightening author; generally, FFS daddies are socially conscious, artistic, journalistic or otherwise unimpeachably Better Than Thou. Daughters usually in thrall to them, sons often avoid them.) Thayer, even regarded through April’s fond eyes, is an asshole.  An artist who loathes the commercial work he does to pay the bills, he has a long history of vicious arguments with son-in-law Jeff, an ad man, and reacts to modern music (apparently jazz) as if someone had struck him very hard with a club.  Which becomes more tempting, the longer he goes on.  His crowning moment is when it’s suggested everyone take their own plate to the sink after dinner.

Father looked distressed.

The poor man. He spends his days in his backyard studio with his Dachshund, Snodgrass, slaving over a hot palette, and here these evil women want him to walk his own dirty dish to the kitchen sink.

Modern music enters the plot through family friend and independent career woman “Aunt” Irene, who invites April for a visit to Boston and introduces her to various young friends.  One, a brilliant but moody musician named Tom, becomes infatuated with April.  You start to see Norma’s point.

“Every boy who comes along. First Hollister, then Neil Burgess, and Tom Barlow, and, of course, always good old Spencer. Why should you have them all?”

Sadly, this is about the extent of the clothing porn. 

Saturday evening had come. Temporarily renouncing all her responsibilities, April became a carefree teen-ager preparing for a date. What a wonderful feeling! As she stepped into her black suede pumps, she felt absolutely grown up.

A readable but not particularly lively book. 

Random points

Amazing names – Thayer and Hollister and Spencer and Snodgrass and Margo. 

Virtually no physical description – clothes, house, etc. Nada.  You fill in all the blanks.

That Cover

The two younger Anderson girls throw a Halloween party, true, but the cover is baffling.  The party covers a chapter and isn’t that big a plot, and the book itself goes from the start of autumn through mid-winter. 

Other books

Date With  A Career (1958)

Destination: Success! (1959)

New Boy in Town (1960)

When The Heart is Ready (1961)

Circle of Love (1962)

Bright Promise (1965) historical

Double Rainbow (1966)

Peter Pembroke, Apprentice

Links

Kirkus review 

A review of  Nickerson's book New Girl In Town at Forever Young Adult blog

Hold Fast The Dream (1955)

 
Hold Fast The Dream
Elizabeth Low,
Harcourt, Brace, 1955

It was noontime in Paris. The medley of sound from bell-tower and boulevard fell faintly on Blithe Moreland's ears, but her hands did not stop work. She continued to press little pellets of clay onto the yard-high figure of a striding man on the stand before her, entirely absorbed in the construction of the human shoulder.

Blithe Moreland is in Paris for the summer, working in the highly sought-after sculpting class of Monsieur Pierre, hoping to impress the master and convince her family back home that art, not college, is her future.  A weekend trip to Salzburg derails her plans, introduces her to the kind Lang family and gives her the artistic inspiration she's been seeking.

Quiet fell upon the crowd and, at the flourish of a trumpet, the famous Lippizan horses with their handsome riders filed through the gate in a slow line, eight white horses stepping proudly in unison like lovely, perfect creatures from another world. This was the world-famous Spanische Reitschule of Vienna, the Spanish Riding School; Blithe had often heard of it.

Moving to Salzburg to study the horses, Blithe is crushed to discover they've now gone on tour. She contents herself studying other horses, throwing herself into sketching and investigating the anatomy of the horse in preparation for someday creating a sculpture.

Apart from Blithe's artistic ambitions, two sub-plots involve a romance (of course) and the slow-developing relationship between the young American and the Austrians she comes to know.   It's a relationship marked by humiliating mistakes and mutual confusion, but with goodwill on both sides.

Both the romance and the international harmony plots take a back seat to Blithe as an artist, a choice that pleases me. The slow pace of her progress is also likeable, and the resolution is believable.  My only real quibble is with the "where'd that come from?" nature of the romance - it pops up at the end of the book as an accomplished feature of her life, but until about 5 pages before, she wasn't even aware she liked the guy.

 Links
Kirkus review 
(atypically inaccurate)

First Love (1963) short stories

First Love

Gay Head, editor; John Fernie, il (cover)

1963, Scholastic Magazines, Inc.

14 warm and glowing stories selected by Gay Head.

Stardust by Virginia Laughlin (originally Boys Don’t Understand)

16-year-old Wendy Warren dreams about the older brother of the boy next door.  23-year-old Brian complimented her and she fell head over heels, much to the annoyance of his younger brother Tod.

A Girl Called Charlie by William Kehoe

Quiet, thoughtful Charlotte Hollister finds a meeting of the minds with Ridge Evans when he protests the “going steady” fad in their high school.

 Blue Valentine by Mary Gibbons (orig in Woman's Day, Feb. 1954, shown to left)

16-year-old Angelo Colucci, oldest and only son in a family of girls, chooses what he thinks is the ultimate feminine gift for his adored girlfriend, Ethel-Irene Simons, daughter of a local professor.  His instincts are perfect – except he doesn’t realize how her parents will react.

The Walnut Trees by Virginia Akin (originally in Woman's Day Magazine)

Jenny Lee’s crush on a handsome teacher is resolved in an unexpectedly gracious way when his engagement is announced.

Once Upon A Pullman by Florence Jane Soman

He raised on eyebrow. “Just fasten your seat belt and let me take care of the landing.”

19-year-old William Fowler tries to impress a girl he meets on a train by cribbing from a novel about a smooth seducer.

Epicac by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (originally in Collier's)

A machine helps a man woo his coworker, and falls in love with her itself.

Sixteen by Maureen Daly

The narrator tells of a night out of time, when she goes ice skating and meets a boy and waits for him to call and realizes he never will. A strange, dreamy story.

Eighteen by Charlie Brodie

The boy from Daly’s Sixteen tells his side of the skating night.

Prelude by Lucille Vaughan Payne (originally in Seventeen)

Nancy is popular, pretty and comfortably middle-class; her only “quirk” is an unusual affinity for classical music. Stephen in invisible, awkward and poor, but he also loves music and plays the piano.  They fall in love, but Nancy has to decide if she can accept the change their dating will bring to her life of popularity.

Tomboy by Gertrude Schweitzer

Frances is uninterested in the social/romantic life at school, and resists growing up.  Forced to attend a 16^th birthday party for a cousin, she quickly plans with old friend Skeeter to slip out. To catch frogs in a nearby marsh. Then she meets a college boy…

Bittersweet by Arlene Hale (originally title "First Love")

Leslie and Claude were high school sweethearts. Then he went to college, and suddenly, stopped writing. When he comes home for winter break, they’re forced to confront the truth.

Who is Sylvia? By Laura Nelson Baker (originally in Seventeen, September 1959 issue, shown left)

Adam falls in love with quirky, aloof Sylvia, who recently moved to town and lives with her grandparents. When parental decisions suddenly end their relationship, Adam faces the ephemeral nature of love.

Theme Song by Dave Grubb

Edith, a dreamy girl working in her father’s small restaurant, finds romance in the love life of a young man, a soldier posted at the local base, who comes in and talks about the girl he left behind.

Tough Guy by Peter Brackett

Surly, angry Byron is always ready to fight but secretly is in love with Nina and even writes a poem about her. The verse falls into the wrong hands, and destroys his bad boy rep.  But it also gets Nina’s attention.

The authors

Several of the authors were difficult to find online. This has to be one of the most unlikely places to encounter Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  His short, EPICAC, was first published in 1950, in Collier's Weekly, and the central figure (a computer) was based on the real-life ENIAC.

Gay Head

Hi There, High School! (1960)

Etiquette For Young Moderns (1954)

Dear Gay Head (1962)

Boy Dates Girl (1961)

Party Perfect (1963)

Florence Jane Soman

Love Is A Lonely Thing (1953)

A Break In The Weather (1959)

Picture Of Success (1966)

Maureen Daly

Seventeenth Summer (1942)

Sixteen and Other Stories (1961)

Acts of Love 

First A Dream

Arlene Hale

a prolific writer of nurse romances. 

Laura Nelson Baker

Somebody, Somewhere

The Special Year

Links

ENIAC

Maureen Daly papers 

Arlene Hale obituary