Well, I still love Penny Parrish. I truly thought she would be annoying by now, but I just adore her. She is a little flighty, but she is so good-hearted and kind, but she has backbone too. She will cut a bitch if she needs to, Lousie!
So the premise her is the that Parrish family has moved (conveniently) to West Point where eldest son David is a plebe. There is a LOT of West Point jargon here that I didn't necessarily get. (Although the lighthearted look at hazing was bonkers.) But I did get the gist and danged if it didn't make me want to visit the Point again.
(I went to a wedding there when I was in high school and I remember it being rather fancy - they had real wine for communion! What kind of protestants put up with that nonsense, I ask you??)
Carroll's dad has bought a farm (mansion) nearby and the girls have a grand time there. She is in school in New York, and Penny goes down to visit. At one point there is some nonsense with a football game and people just missing each other and Penny meets a famous actress, spends the day in a theater watching her play and then goes out and meets a bunch of movie stars. You know, as one does.
There are dates and dances and misunderstandings and David goes blind from studying too hard. (Let that be a lesson to you - take it easy on the studying!) There is a chaste kiss at the end and it is HOT STUFF! (Just kidding, but it is sweet and romantic and adorable.)
There are still black characters talking in dialect, and every time it happens I feel that sound of a needle scraping across an album, taking me out of the happiness of the book. There is some very pointed anti-communist talk that firmly sets this in it's time. But other than that, I barely took any notes on this because I was just enjoying it as a read. There was one stupid section that featured the abhorrent Tippy and dreadful Bobby - but other than that it was charming.
There was a nice section where Carroll's dad (who I think is HOT!) and Penny are talking about how small everyone looks from the New York penthouse balcony and Langdon Houghton says "We are quite little people when we get down into it. But each one of us is important. Without us [the world] couldn't be so big." and Penny says how strange it is that everyone has a life of their own. And for some reason this just stuck with me. I sometimes look at people in wonder that they see the world as their story, just the way I see it as mine. (I mean, predominantly, not in like a completely self-obsessed way.)
It made me appreciate that a happy story like this can have an impact and that everyone's story has value and that sort of thing. It made me thinkier than I expected. That is all.
On to GLORY BE which looks like it might have a plot twist or two. Will Louise wind up in the penitentiary? Will Dick be kicked out of the Point? One can only hope...
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