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I consider myself a reader who is more "character driven" as we say, than plot-driven. In the second book in Annette Meyers' Olivia Brown series, set in 1920's New York, I have discovered a hidden "setting driven" side. I didn't like the protagonist, but I was taken by the time and place in which she lives. Olivia's time and place is a fascinating one; it's post-war, pre-depression, prohibition America in a busy and chaotic city. The full range of characters from bootleggers to bohemians populates the pages of Meyers' book. The pace is frantic, as Olivia, a young independent poet runs from speakeasy to poetry reading to dinner engagement. A young woman is found hanging in a tree during a country weekend gathering that Olivia is attending with her Greenwich Village friends. No one understands how or why this could have happened to the woman, ostensibly the nanny to their host's two children. But the woman is not all she appears. I very much wanted to like Olivia, whom I'd met in Free Love, but I can't. While she strikes me as wanting to be seen a flamboyant, independent, tolerant and representative of her generation and of the new age, she comes across to me as shallow, convinced of her own genius, self-absorbed and careless with other's affections. She flirts with everyone, she accepts help from anyone; in fact, for all her appearance as an independent woman, Olivia is forever being rescued by one or another of the men - genteel and rough - in her life. As for me, when I go to a poetry reading, I want to hear the poems read, not performed with raised arms and dramatic gestures.Ý The folks who show up in the book from the time - Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair, among others, and the ghost of John Reed - add a strong touch of verisimilitude to a fast-moving story. Olivia and her group define sophistication, however, as an endless series of partying, tossing aside lovers and flirting with anyone and everyone who comes into view and downing endless teacups of gin (shudder). The protagonist has a tendency to talk about how small and attractive she is when she stamps her little foot and while I admire her determination to live her own life on her own daring terms, I'd rather spend time with Mattie, her housekeeper and "dearest friend" who is much less pretentious. I confess, however, I read the book from start to finish without stopping, and considering how lukewarm I was about it, that should surely tell you that there's a lot to the book.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, February 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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