Customer Reviews

Best of Everything

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I believe this is Jaffe's very first novel and, to my mind, also the best. Great literature? No...but character-driven, engrossing, emotionally involving and very, very juicy. Quite dated (takes place in the early 50s) but still a steamy and believably accurate account of what transpired for women venturing out on their own at the time...the brilliant, driven, heartbroken college grad; the sweet hayseed who loses her innocence; the "bad girl" who pursues an acting career only to lose everything over a cruel mentor; a single mom who exudes quiet strength & dignity and an absolutely provincial chick from the Bronx who smugly pursues her housewife destiny and is none the worse for it. They all surface at a large, glitzy publishing house for a time and live with the rampant, blatant sexism that was typical for the times but seems horrifying today. An ultra-enjoyable read with memorable, fully fleshed-out characters.

Ooooooh......this is one of those juicy summer reads that is so hard to put down. Diapers dragged the floor, salmonella dripped off thawing chicken breasts onto the counter and the phone rang out its throat as I eagerly read page after page of this middle-brow novel.
Joan Crawford is reponsible for me hunting this book down in Amazon.com's used book shop. I've seen the film of the same title many times, but it wasn't until my last viewing during a local Crawfordthon that I developed the itch the read the novel that inspired the movie. To my surprise, I loved the novel. The film was much campier (what movie with Ms. Crawford isn't?) than the novel, therefore less irritating to read than the movie is to watch. For one thing, Hollywood's presentation of the women in the film is much less rounded and tediously more condescending than in the novel. The "girls" in the movie dither and drivel and snivel far more than Jaffe wrote them doing.
What was eerie about the novel was the contemporary feel of the characters' difficulties in their lives. Remove some of the dated descriptions of New York, business tools, and sundry material goods, many of Jaffe's depictions of women entering adulthood in a male-oriented world of more than forty years ago could easily be written today. Sadly, many of the demoralizing situations that Jaffe's five women stumbled into are, with slight alterations, still perpetuated and experienced in these more enlightened times. I think this relevancy along with Jaffe's engrossing writing style are what make "The Best of Everything" such an enjoyable read. It is definitely worth the trouble it takes to get your hands on a copy.

What a great book!!! I loved the girls, the time period, and even though I hate New York City...I loved it in this book! I also bought the movie, so as soon as I finished the book, I watched the 1958 movie version...also wonderful!

This book follows four girls through new jobs, new loves, lost loves, unwanted pregnancies, and death in 1953 New York. The pace of this book was excellent, and the characters were people you really come to care about. Seeing how there's so much to this book, I'm not even going to try to summarize it, but it was great!

I can't wait to get my hands on more of Ms. Jaffe's books! I've added all of them to my wish list and hope they'll be just as entertaining as this book was!

Rona Jaffe excels with her story of five women who live and work in New York in the 1950.s. She relates their career and love pursuits with uncanny insight. She writes about the loss of innocence, about a love that turns obsessive, about betrayal and abortion. Bold for its time and still relevant today the book is well worth a read. Jaffe's "Class Reunion" is also excellent and comes highly recommended.

I know these five young career girls starting out in New York City, and you probably do, too. Rona Jaffe gets it right - the sleazy episodes with drunken lecherous bosses, the awe-inspiring sight of the city at night from someone's plush apartment, the broken hearts and broken dreams, and the excitement and opportunity, too. For the reader immersed in this book, the world shrinks to the thoughts and experiences of these young women, and in each of their stories lies a remembered, or hoped-for episode in our own lives. An intimate and exciting set of vignettes depicting growing up in an exciting place and time.

I ordered this book when I noticed Don Draper reading it in Season 1 of Mad Men. From there I was nothing if not utterly blown away. Rona Jaffe has a timeless voice that captures every nuance of 1950s vernacular while slicing to the very core of her most contemporary readers. Times have changed, but the struggles that these richly drawn characters face are all too common for any woman who has ever tried to have it all, all at once. I only wish I would have read this book when I was a bit younger! There are only so many types of personalities in the world. In this book, Jaffe helps us build a better understanding of many of them. Armed with her insight, I feel that much more ready to take on the world!

An excellent read for those that can look past the obvious norms and traditions of the 1950's and appreciate this book for its themes transcending every generation; ambition, finding value in your work, first love, female friendship, competition with other women, office politics and choosing when to marry and have children or not. Although there are no cell phones, computers, twittering-my space-face book social networks, the human longings and foibles of these five women in l950's Manhattan are ever present in modern day america. If you look past the cover of a book.,,

If the end of the second season of "Mad Men" has left you hungry for more sexy drama from mid-twentieth century New York, reach for Rona Jaffe's first novel. Surprisingly well-written and psychologically astute for a bestseller, Jaffe keeps you turning the pages as you follow the adventures of five women in a New York publishing house who face the perennial female problem of balancing romance with a career. This book is a time capsule in the best way and a thoroughly enjoyable read (and much better than the movie). Only a somewhat sloppy, off-key ending kept this from a five-star rating.

I read this book one chapter at a time at bedtime, and it was an enjoyable way to end the day. I liked the characters, the writing was descriptive, and it gave me an idea of what young working women in New York City in the 1950s were like. I guess it was "scandalous" for it's time, but pretty tame compared to romance books published today. I also bought the DVD of the movie that was made after the book became a bestseller, and I was sorry that the movie didn't match up with the book exactly (though that's a problem with the movie and not the book.)

"You see them every morning at a quarter to nine, rushing out of the maw of the subway tunnel, filing out of Grand Central Station, crossing Lexington and Park and Madison and Fifth Avenues, the hundred and hundreds of girls." From those hordes, Rona Jaffe chose five composites and shares their lives as they navigate the complexities and ironies of 1950's Manhattan. Jaffe wrote this book while working as an associate editor at Fawcett Publications in the 1950s. Published in 1958, it was later made into a movie, starring Joan Crawford.

I work on Madison Avenue and though we have come a long way, there are some things that the women of the novel share with those I currently observe. Jaffe says bluntly and immediately, "None of them have enough money." I hear and see that from those women today who are just starting out in their careers. On a practical level, this presses them to quickly find support emotionally and economically. It sets up some desperate relationships that when viewed objectively are positively head-scratching. And this gives rise to the five interlocking stories that follow the personal and professional struggles faced by these "girls".

Jaffe makes some great observations that remain true today: hierarchical offices based on stature, bosses that intimidate to compensate for lack of skills, Seinfeld truisms like "You could die in New York behind the locked door of your apartment and no one would ever know until some neighbor complained of the smell", the role alcohol continues to play in many Manhattan industries like advertising and publishing "I like whiskey, I prefer it to people", and the season of the "Summer Bachelor" deliciously depicted in one of Mad Men's plot lines.

The book starts well but becomes a tad long and repetitious. Jaffe is not a Yates or Cheever but definitely worth reading. She reserves her best prose for the top of each chapter - they definitely shine - including this passage, "Every square of light was an office, and in every office all over the twilit city there were girls much like herself, happy or disappointed, ambitious or bored, covering their typewriters hastily and going off to meet people they loved, or delaying the minutes of departure because home meant the loneliness of a long dark night."