Customer Reviews

Saratoga Trunk

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

 

 

Ferber tales the story of Clio Dulaine -- an illegitimate French girl who comes to New Orleans after residing in Paris for most of her life. The story is set in the mid 1800's. Clio and her entourage include: Kaka, a voodoo-like nurse maid and her colorful friend Cupide -- a dwarf. Clio's ultimately goal is to reveal to her upper class blood grandparents who she is and blackmail them.

Clio is successful at this but while scheming she falls in love with Clint Maroon -- a flamboyant cowboy from the rough country Texas. They clash with each other, but ultimately there is a bond. When the scheme with Clio's grandparents forces them to move on they decide to go to Saratoga, New York. Saratoga, at this period of time, was a vacation resort area where many rich people spent their time. Clio schemes for more money by chumming up with the plentiful, wealthy bachelors. However, her bond and feelings for Clint causes problems.

This story was interesting in the fact that it reveals what it must have been like to live in New Orleans at this period of time. In addition, Ferber paints a luxurious picture of the resort-like community of Saratoga. Clint is quite a character and the two of them complement one another (Clio reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara in many ways). While Clio was a hard one to like, the book does keep one interested. I felt Ferber's main point was that there may have been armed robberies and anarchy in the west at that period of time, but the east had its share of crime. Graft, economic warfare (even leading to violence), and greed nearly ruined the country. Overall, another interesting book that teaches something about the American social aspects of living in the middle/late 1800's.

This a tale of Clio Dulaine, a young woman who see's her mistress mother become an "ugly, broken hearted woman" by her father's wife. She goes to her old home town of New Orleans by seeking revenge for her mother's unhappiness and by ruining her dead father's wife's life by re-hashing the family scandal. While in New Orleans she meets a handsome Texan Cowboy, Clint Maroon. They have a stormy affair but she won't commit to him because she want's respectablity, comfort and money, something her mother did not have. Clint and Clio then go to Saratoga and meet Bart Van Steed, a millionaire, who owns railroads. She woo's Bart but all the time thinking of Clint. In the end Bart asks her to marry him but she sacrafices money and comfort to be with Clint.

_Saratoga Trunk_ tells a love story while evoking all the richness of three eras--Paris and New Orleans of the 1850s-1870s, the Gilded Age (or the Robber Baron period), and the early 20th century. It's the story of Clio Dulaine and Clint Maroon, who begin an unconventional relationship in an unforgettable scene bursting with detail.

That detail--immediate and sensory as well as historical and nuanced--makes the novel as effective as the best period romances, because it supports the excellent characterization to create a believable story from improbable elements (e.g., half-Black illegitimate girl educated in France, dwarf servant, cowboy dandy in New Orleans, they travel to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York and meet the movers and shakers of the Gilded Age, etc.).

Masterful prose--sparely elegant at times and incomparably lush at others--combined with sharply-drawn detail and fully rounded characters leads to a truly pleasurable experience. I completely recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a writer from the Golden Age of 20th-century American literature at the top of her form. Even _So Big_, for which the same author won a Pulitzer in 1924, is merely the equal of this novel.

In her day Edna Ferber was tremendously successful -- a kind of Stephen King or John Grisham of the 1920s and 1930s. She wrote "Show Boat" which became a successful musical and classic movie and "Giant" which became a vehicle for James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor.

However this book came across to me as terribly dated, poorly written, cliche-ridden and occasionally casually racist by today's standards. Some writers wear better than others. Ferber, it seems to me, wears very poorly, explaining her relative neglect today.

Just the names of the characters gives a hint of what we're up against. The hero is Clint Maroon, described thus by the author: "He was magnificent, he was vast, he was beautiful, he was crude, he was rough, he was untamed, he was Texas."

The heroine is the beauteous Clio Delane, a half-creole daughter of a New Orleans mistress educated in Paris, determined to wed wealthily. Her entourage consists of a dwarf, Cupide, and an-ever-loovin' mama, Kaka. Clio's eyes are "shaded and mysterious, like twin pools beneath an overhanging ledge."

This book was well-received in its day -- which puts the work of critics into perspective. The author was an occasional member of the Algonquin Round Table, so the critics were automatically well-disposed toward her. She was a member of the "club". But reading this book now, one sees its dreadful formulaic quality, its lack of anything much to say, its reliance on the most hackneyed of truisms. It really doesn't deserve to be read any more.

Interesting, engaging characters carry the story, but the plot limps along with little direction, split into two very different halves and culminating in something of an anticlimax. As always, Ferber enclosed the main story with a post-story frame that, in this case, seems to serve little purpose except to moralize about her characters' misdeeds.

This is only review that mentions Clio and being 1.2 black. In the movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper the nurse reminds Clio not to hope for acceptence because her grandmother was a placee and her mother was a placee. At that time that ment a white man married/single entering into a arrangement with a black or mixed race woman to support her and any off spring produced of that sexual union.

I haven't read the entire book as yet, but I have read the first few pages and I liked what I read. I saw the movie and thought it very good and wanted to read the novel. It will probably be even better.