I've seen and enjoyed a couple of different film adaptations of this novel, including the 1932 version starring Irene Dunne and the 1941 version starring Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer. [It's very weepy, and you often want to take the characters and shake some sense into them, but it's fun anyway.]

I'd been wanting to read the novel for some time, and finally ordered this somewhat-battered paperback from Better World Books. [I was amused to find a note on the flyleaf: "I didn't care for this - E.M. - 1995". Will hope I like it better!]

Later: I did appreciate the book, but I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed it - it's very, very grim in places, a hymn to human frailty. Even today, when an illicit affair does not demand as much secrecy as it did when this story was set, the emotional (and sometimes professional) fallout can be considerable, and given the time and place of the story - well, it's clear that things are going to be difficult.

The characters, and the story itself, are more complex in the book than in the film treatments, though the films did a decent job of depicting the main part of the story. Basically, it's about a young woman who's found that she enjoys being nice to the men - though she doesn't actually go all the way, her willingness to flirt, stay out late, and even kiss has given her a bit of a reputation. She has several chances to marry but refuses to take them, seeking a freedom that won't be possible for women of her age and social position for a very long time. She falls in love, there are complications and confusions, and when next she meets her beloved he's a married man... but they decide to take up together anyway, and she becomes his mistress. [One could call this a bad decision, but in itself it needn't have been fatal; perhaps the worst decision she makes at this point is to stop working so that she can always be home in case he can stop by. Are you wincing? I winced when I got to that bit. The longing to shake some sense into a fictional character was almost overwhelming!]

The book takes us along with heroine Ray as she tries to make her way alone, then as she tries to cope with life as a kept woman, never knowing when she'll be able to see her lover or for how long, and always aware that he has a wife and growing family to go home to while she has... nothing but him. She does ponder alternatives, what might have been if she'd made other choices in her life, but for the most part she just tries to deal with things as they are and make the best of them. She also goes to great lengths to be what he wants her to be, shying away from difficult topics if he seems to be uncomfortable. This is amazingly frustrating to the modern reader - and was, I hope, to readers back in the day - and in fact leads to some very harsh consequences (with a darkly humorous twist). More scenes where I wanted to dope-slap the characters! [I suspect the author wanted to, as well; she emphasized Ray's thoughts as her lover nattered on about himself, with her mentally echoing "I. I. I. I. Me. Me. Me. Me." I think Hurst had an agenda here.]

Example: "The nearest she ever came to voicing some of the unconscious bitterness that on occasion would surge against him, was once when she said to him, quite playfully, 'That is because I guess always I must be content to walk skulking along the back streets of your life.' And he, who was notoriously quick to take offense, had sulked days after this." Not your typical romance novel, this.

Time passes, the lovers bicker and make up - and eventually his insistence on her presence on his various trips ensure that his family begins to suspect their relationship. This leads to some very tough confrontations, and from there to the even more difficult conclusion to this tale of a woman who loved not wisely... not wisely at all! By the end, it felt like something out of Balzac. Some of the films gave a nod to the grimmer aspects of the story, but I don't think any of them went as far as the book does.

Again, I'm glad I read it, but it's not an upbeat story!

This book's going into my Based on the Book bookbox, with this book serving as the bookbox journal. The box will be on the way to the first participant soon. Enjoy!

Caught as part of the 'based on the book' bookbox from GoryDetails. A nice read, still working on it (started and stopped). More later.

Almost finished with this! Am actually really enjoying this even if it comes off as sexist, somewhat (or very) saccharine, and outdated.

Outdoors book shelf.