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Alice Adams (1921)

by Booth Tarkington

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5141747,101 (3.61)52
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

The winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize in literature and the subject of several well-received film adaptations, Alice Adams is regarded as one of Booth Tarkington's most accomplished novels. The tale follows the exploits of the plucky young protagonist, who disregards her family's low social standing and pursues love with the well-heeled young man of her dreams.

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Showing 1-5 of 17 (next | show all)
This novel put me in mind of Edith Wharton and her tales of class mobility, or the lack thereof, in the society of the 1920s. Tarkington has addressed a similar situation here, a young girl who is just enough below the status of her peers to have a hard time keeping up and fitting in. Her mother is a disagreeable creature and her father doesn’t seem to understand the ramifications or difficulties of the position Alice is in. For him, she is his lovely daughter, why would anyone mistreat her; wouldn’t everyone love her?

I felt quite sorry for the father, Virgil Adams. He is a consummately decent man, who is forced into a questionable position by a nagging wife who wants status for her children and his love for a daughter, who no doubt is worthy of more than she is getting. The thing that struck me most about Alice was that she might have been perfectly happy if someone had simply given her to permission to be herself and belong to the upper middle class life that she is born into.

At times, she recognizes the false face she finds herself putting forward and despises it.

Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous impulse, springing to her lips on the instant; yet it all seemed to have been founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden self kept such designs in stock and handed them up to her, ready-made, to be used for its own purpose. What appeared to be the desired result was a false-coloured image in Russell’s mind; but if he liked that image he wouldn’t be like Alice Adams; nor would anything he thought about the image be a thought about her.

The story is well-written and left me with a lot to think about regarding what really matters in life and how easily people actually do misunderstand one another. Not all of the very wealthy are painted as inhumane, although they are often clueless, and the divide between Alice and the other girls is understandable, since we tend to gravitate to those who share our lives and experiences.

By this time most of “the other girls,” her contemporaries, were away at school or college, and when they came home to stay, they “came out”--that feeble revival of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial inspection of the tribe. Alice neither went away nor “came out”, and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to lack freshness of lustre--jewels are richest when revealed all new in a white velvet box.

Like in any real tragedy, this train is headed for disaster, destiny is the engineer, and everytime the train stops and those who want to avoid being involved in the crash might disembark, they refuse to.

Sadly, this novel has a glaring drawback and one that I cannot help but acknowledge. There is, threaded throughout the book, a use of racial slurs and stereotypes that make the reader wince. I am fairly deft at placing a book within its historical context and allowing for the differences in that time and this, but this book went beyond the pale for me. I think what made it so egregious was that these people and their attitudes had nothing to do with the story being told, they added nothing to the understanding of the events, and they could have been left out without ever being missed. Race was not at issue here, nor was a single black character an actual mover of plot or meaning. Having just recently read Strange Fruit, it was simply impossible to gloss over these passages as if they were not there, and this alone kept me from giving this book a 5-star rating. I would encourage anyone who reads it to be prepared for some discomfort in this regard. ( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
The story is set in a lower-middle-class household in an unnamed town in the Midwest shortly after World War I. The center of the story focuses on the young girl Alice Adams who tries to climb the social ladder and her flirtations with Arthur Russell who belongs to the upper class. But later on “She breathed more rapidly but knew that he could not have detected it, and she took some pride in herself for the way she had met this little crisis. But to have met it with such easy courage meant to her something more reassuring than a momentary pride in the serenity she had shown. For she found that what she had resolved in her inmost heart was now really true: she was "through with all that!”
This book won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1922. ( )
  Pharmacdon | Dec 20, 2020 |
A good story, but not very deep. ( )
  Chica3000 | Dec 11, 2020 |
I find that anytime I am reading a novel by an author I have never previously read I begin reading about the author partway through the novel. I think I am trying to understand the context around the novel. When it was written and the time it was set in are important as is who the story is written by. Sometimes understanding the author adds more depth to the story, and sometimes is doesn’t.

Booth Tarkington won a couple of major awards for his work. Alice Adams won him the Pulitzer Prize. His novels were very popular during his time. It is not a period of American history that I am as familiar with as others, that is the late 1800s, early 1900s. I haven’t seen a lot of interest in Booth Tarkington’s works compared to other authors of the same period. After reading Alice Adams I am a bit surprised at the lack of attention he gets. He certainly knew his craft. He tells a good story, and he addresses the class struggles that are becoming apparent during that period. Alice does not have the same advantages as some of her friends and acquaintances, both because she is female and because of what her parents simply aren’t able to provide. I like that Booth Tarkington treats these issues honestly, with compassion but also realistically. I think the reason that Booth Tarkington may be a little ignored today is because the issues of middle class and lower middle class are not that dramatic and therefore don’t draw our attention as much as other times and events. His writing also comes across as a bit dated; some of this is how he treats race, but I imagine his descriptions and characters probably reflect the times accurately. I imagine I will read more of Booth Tarkington, but for the reasons stated I am drawn more strongly to other authors.
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  afkendrick | Oct 24, 2020 |
I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure its Pulitzer status holds up. The Katherine Hepburn film is very true to the book, which I always like, and I'm a fan of optimistic endings. I do think, though, that this would have more lasting weight, along the lines of a Theodore Dreiser novel, if BT had allowed the family to continue to descend into ruin. Or maybe that would be too much melodrama. I don't know! Of its time, on the whole enjoyably so. ( )
  beautifulshell | Aug 27, 2020 |
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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

The winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize in literature and the subject of several well-received film adaptations, Alice Adams is regarded as one of Booth Tarkington's most accomplished novels. The tale follows the exploits of the plucky young protagonist, who disregards her family's low social standing and pursues love with the well-heeled young man of her dreams.

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Indiana University Press

2 editions of this book were published by Indiana University Press.

Editions: 0253215935, 0253342279

 

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