Summer at Tiffany

I absolutely loved this – devoured it in about three days. For me it was a charming little time capsule of a book. Fair warning though – this is not a thrill a minute page turner. It’s an earnest and sweet account of one girl’s unforgettable summer in New York City – working at Tiffany for $20 a week in 1945. I read a review which compared this listening to a beloved grandmother’s interminable stories of the past. Certainly there are moments where the narrative lags, but then again that’s life and so it felt all the more real to me. And personally I love hearing my grandmother’s stories of her youth in the Great Depression – learning to cook fried chicken from a former slave, listening to the Joe Lewis fight on the radio…only after their little Texas farmhouse got electricity!

But I digress. What I’m saying is that I think you have to have an appreciation for oral history to really ‘get’ this book – because that’s what this is more than a ‘memoir’. Could the writing have been a little tighter? Sure, but so many memoirs feel so emotionally manipulative – the clever writing trying to distract you from the fact that you’re just reading about another ordinary person. I love history and I personally love knowing how ordinary people processed the world around them. And Majorie is a charming narrator – guileless and naïve almost to a fault, but her wide-eyed Midwestern take on 1945 New York is completely charming. It’s worth noting that some general knowledge of 1940s history and pop culture helps make this story all the more relevant and enjoyable.

Notes: read January 2010 for Nerdy Girl Book Club. Recommended by Ann & Kathryn via goodreads.com