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Books: Rona Jaffe’s “The Best of Everything”

Do you like television’s “Mad Men?” I sure do.

Imagine my delight, then, to fall into Rona Jaffe’s first novel, “The Best of Everything” (1958). Set in the early Fifties, the story follows a handful of working girls at a Manhattan publishing house.

Leisurely told, Jaffe (1931-2005) has a light touch with heavy themes. I lapped it up.

Caroline Bender makes her way to her first day of work on a “cold, foggy midwinter morning in New York, the kind that makes you think of lung ailments.” That wry tone is the voice of this engaging read. Caroline is a recent college graduate whose heart was broken by her Harvard man, who sailed away for a European summer and returned married to a Texas oil heiress.

What’s a Radcliffe gal to do?

Live at home and work in the city. “The job was more than an economic inconvenience, it was an emotional necessity.”

Also at the publishing house: Mary Agnes, the office gossip, saving up for her wedding in two years. Barbara, divorced, mother of baby Hillary. April and Gregg, sometime actresses, who take temp work at the publishing house to pay rent.

With the exception of the deliciously lazy and mean editor Amanda Farrow, the office is run by “Mad Men” characters. Mr. Shalimar (really!) liquors up the young typists and impresses them with tales of his friendship with Eugene O’Neill. Shalimar manhandles all level of female employees, after hours, and crawls under the table at a company party, like a dog, to admire a girl’s legs. He’s a fool. He’s also the boss. More likable but no less damaged is Mike Rice, an editor, who falls for Caroline. A divorced father living in a hotel, Mike drinks so prodigiously I quit trying to measure.

Caroline is interested in Mike, but pines for Eddie Harris, her Harvard man. She strings along pallid but decent Paul and teases movie idol John Cassaro. Meanwhile, a married ad exec pursues Barbara. Mary Agnes finally marries. April falls for socialite Dexter Key, who seduces her, gets her pregnant, arranges the abortion, then casually dumps her. Afterwards, April goes on a boy bender that made me blush.

Gregg’s love affair with Broadway producer David Wilder Savage is a lovely and tragic sub story. He loves Gregg, but her neediness is so extreme he has to let her go. She stalks him, disastrously.

The end belongs to Caroline: it’s wild and wonderful, surprising but fitting.

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