Beatrice, married to
Harry for five years, feels that her marriage has become stale. She’s
looking to rekindle some of the closeness that has been missing, and
perhaps conceive a child. Her hopes for a summer of togetherness are
dashed when Harry informs her that she will be staying at the hotel
in Montauk while he commutes to New York during the week.
Beatrice is
disappointed but hopes to make the best of it. The problem is that
she doesn’t fit with the rich women staying at the hotel for the
summer. Their major preoccupations are gossip, planning fund raising
events, and enjoying leisure activities like golf and tennis.
Beatrice, who comes from a modest background, feels more at home with
the people of Montauk and befriends a laundress, Elizabeth, who has
four children to care for. She’s also drawn to the working men who
seem so much sturdier than Harry and his friends. She is particularly
drawn to Thomas, the lighthouse keeper, with disastrous results.
The author does a
good job of portraying the period of the 1930s as the country begins
to recover from the great depression. The contrast between the
society women and the average citizens of Montauk is instructive. The
women are vain and silly with little to occupy them while people,
like Elizabeth, struggle in the real world of work and family.
Perhaps the best
part of the book is the lovely descriptions of Montauk. As Beatrice
falls in love with the scenery, we do, too. I was less drawn to the
way the story is told. It is all first person. Therefore, we great a
clear picture of Beatrice’s thoughts, but I felt there was a lack
of dialog, which for me makes the characters interesting.
The is primarily a
romance novel although it touches on the manners and mores of the
time in which women had a place and were expected to keep to it and
bigotry and snobbishness were rampant in the uppers classes. If you
enjoy leisurely romance novels, this is a good choice.
I received this book
from St. Martin’s Press for this review.
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