The Forgotten Bestseller That Understood The Pressure To Be Interesting

The Forgotten Bestseller That Exposed Our Obsession With Having An Interesting Life (Picture Credit – Penguin Random House)

In Rona Jaffe’s New York, a woman could have a job, a smart wardrobe and a promising date, yet still feel she was falling behind. Success was never one achievement. It was the exhausting business of appearing accomplished at work, desirable after hours and entirely in control of whatever happened in between.

Published in 1958, 'The Best of Everything' became an immediate bestseller by giving that pressure a voice. Its setting was a Manhattan publishing house, but its real subject was the gap between the glamorous lives young women were expected to lead and the private costs of trying.

Caroline Bender, a Radcliffe graduate recovering from a broken engagement, enters the typing pool at Fabian Publications with ambitions beyond clerical work. She wants to become an editor, yet professional drive is treated almost as a personal defect.

April Morrison arrives from Colorado and gradually remakes herself into a fashionable New Yorker, hoping sophistication will also bring love. Gregg Adams, an aspiring actress, pursues a relationship that exposes the fragility beneath her apparent independence.

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe (Picture Credit…

Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle