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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
I really adore Kate Winslet. I found out Kate Winslet was in a mini-series by the name of Mildred Pierce. I had to watch it.
(Clearly aired on HBO and not PBS)
Wowza. Right?? It was pretty damn good.
I found out a book existed after and just had to get my hands on it.
The mini-series followed the book pretty closely. I'd be hard pressed to find any huge differences. Yet for some reason, I just could not enjoy the book as much as the TV version. Maybe because I already knew too much. Maybe because once Mildred wasn't Kate Winslet, I could feel myself disliking her more and more as the book progressed. I think of Mildred-Kate as headstrong and admirable but still a little flawed. I think of Mildred as headstrong and admirable and then stupid and weak and never quite bouncing out of it (the few lines at the end did not redeem her in my eyes). The book did a great job of flushing out Monty, and his actions were (almost) justified by the treatment he received. Veda is equally despicable in both versions. A sly creature that I love to hate. I think Treviso became my favorite character with his description of her:
No by God, sure is not. You go to a zoo, hey? See little snake? Is come from India, is all red, yellow, black, ver' pretty little snake. You take 'ome, hey? Make little pet, like puppy dog? No - you got more sense. I tell you, is same wit' dees Veda. You buy ticket, you look at a little snake, but you no take home. No.
3.5 Stars
Bumping to 4 Stars because between the mini-series and the book, it's pretty damn unforgettable.
(Clearly aired on HBO and not PBS)
Wowza. Right?? It was pretty damn good.
I found out a book existed after and just had to get my hands on it.
The mini-series followed the book pretty closely. I'd be hard pressed to find any huge differences. Yet for some reason, I just could not enjoy the book as much as the TV version. Maybe because I already knew too much. Maybe because once Mildred wasn't Kate Winslet, I could feel myself disliking her more and more as the book progressed. I think of Mildred-Kate as headstrong and admirable but still a little flawed. I think of Mildred as headstrong and admirable and then stupid and weak and never quite bouncing out of it (the few lines at the end did not redeem her in my eyes). The book did a great job of flushing out Monty, and his actions were (almost) justified by the treatment he received. Veda is equally despicable in both versions. A sly creature that I love to hate. I think Treviso became my favorite character with his description of her:
No by God, sure is not. You go to a zoo, hey? See little snake? Is come from India, is all red, yellow, black, ver' pretty little snake. You take 'ome, hey? Make little pet, like puppy dog? No - you got more sense. I tell you, is same wit' dees Veda. You buy ticket, you look at a little snake, but you no take home. No.
3.5 Stars
Bumping to 4 Stars because between the mini-series and the book, it's pretty damn unforgettable.
I thought this book would be pulpy melodrama, and it is—especially in its shrill and hurried final chapters—yet I’m surprised by how much I want to say about it. The titular Mildred is a Depression-era divorcée trying to figure out who she is, what she wants out of life, and how to make the money to pay for it. The most interesting thing about her is that she is neither an unfairly oppressed saint held up for us to admire and emulate, nor an entirely degenerate cautionary example. Mildred makes some terrible decisions—chiefly around her poor taste in men and her obsessive, smothering loyalty to her narcissistic daughter Veda (about whom more below)—but she also makes some very good choices, working hard and taking the right advice at the right time, growing a thriving restaurant business in the depths of the Depression. All of that makes Mildred a terrifically interesting protagonist. One can’t always root for her, especially toward the end where she begins to stack bad choice on bad choice. But one can’t quite always root against her, either. It is tragic, how she lands with less than when she started, even if it is largely her own damn fault.
Mildred Pierce is a book about a woman written by a man, and male writers don’t always manage to treat their female characters as actual people. So I did a lot of pondering while reading the book, trying to decide whether James M Cain does Mildred justice as a woman. In most ways, I think he does. There are a few platitudes about “the feminine mind,” but for the most part Cain doesn’t editorialize, doesn’t judge Mildred for her missteps. Her attraction to the shiftless Monte Beregon, for example, Cain allows to be mostly sexual without judgment; that Mildred shocks herself with the intensity of it is an entirely believable reflection of Mildred’s world, not an authorial intrusion. And Mildred’s vanity about her appearance—especially about her legs—is balanced by insecurities along other axes that round Mildred out, keep her out of the realm of stereotype. As a reader, in sympathy with Mildred, I didn’t think she was being presented as one of those conniving females who use their wiles to manipulate men into doing their bidding. Yet, when Veda hurls this accusation at her, while it certainly isn’t fair, it doesn’t feel entirely wrong, either. That’s an awful lot of complexity in the construction of Mildred’s character, and I think Cain deserves full credit for that.
But what about that Veda? She absolutely is everything she accuses her mother of being, and more—she is a villainous femme fatale, pulled from Central Casting, ticking all the boxes of that archetype. In one of the book’s funniest scenes, Veda’s music teacher tries to warn Mildred that she should be wary of Veda. He draws a very apt analogy to a snake, and at Mildred’s indignant exclamation, “Are you calling my child a snake?” the teacher replies, “No—is worse than snake! Is colaratura soprano!” Veda is the ultimate diva, a wicked narcissist with boundless capacity to take advantage of others. Still, the real tragedy of Mildred Pierce is not so much in the fact that Veda is a demon and Mildred is her innocent victim; rather it’s in Mildred’s persistent blindness to the fact, Mildred’s desperation for Veda’s approval so intense that it twists Mildred into a pale caricature of her, attempting manipulations of her own without any of Veda’s calculating skill at it. And here, too, perhaps Cain deserves credit for capturing a certain strain of maternal attachment, which starts out as merely a doting mother’s great hopes for her confident, willful child, but grows into something desperate and terribly unhealthy.
There is one facet of Mildred Pierce that I have to mention: its deployment of the brassy-best-friend archetype, such a staple of midcentury entertainment (think of any number of characters played by Celeste Holm; or I Love Lucy’s Ethel Mertz). The archetype here is instantiated in one Lucy Gessler, Mildred’s hard-boiled next-door neighbor, who nudges Mildred into her new life after she throws her husband out at the book’s opening. Mrs Gessler is there every step of the way with coarse sexual advice, bootleg hooch (one of the more interesting social history aspects of the book is the interaction between early-Depression and late-Prohibition forces), and business acumen that makes Mildred’s first restaurant a howling success. The quick-thinking Mrs Gessler is always ready to “pull something,” as she does to save Mildred’s bacon when her ex-in-laws and neighbors start to gossip about Mildred’s fledgling affair with Monte. When Prohibition ends, Mrs Gessler leans on Mildred to add a bar to her restaurant, naturally appointing herself bartender, and it’s hard to imagine a better place for her. I wish every one of us could have a Mrs Gessler of our very own.
Mildred Pierce is a book about a woman written by a man, and male writers don’t always manage to treat their female characters as actual people. So I did a lot of pondering while reading the book, trying to decide whether James M Cain does Mildred justice as a woman. In most ways, I think he does. There are a few platitudes about “the feminine mind,” but for the most part Cain doesn’t editorialize, doesn’t judge Mildred for her missteps. Her attraction to the shiftless Monte Beregon, for example, Cain allows to be mostly sexual without judgment; that Mildred shocks herself with the intensity of it is an entirely believable reflection of Mildred’s world, not an authorial intrusion. And Mildred’s vanity about her appearance—especially about her legs—is balanced by insecurities along other axes that round Mildred out, keep her out of the realm of stereotype. As a reader, in sympathy with Mildred, I didn’t think she was being presented as one of those conniving females who use their wiles to manipulate men into doing their bidding. Yet, when Veda hurls this accusation at her, while it certainly isn’t fair, it doesn’t feel entirely wrong, either. That’s an awful lot of complexity in the construction of Mildred’s character, and I think Cain deserves full credit for that.
But what about that Veda? She absolutely is everything she accuses her mother of being, and more—she is a villainous femme fatale, pulled from Central Casting, ticking all the boxes of that archetype. In one of the book’s funniest scenes, Veda’s music teacher tries to warn Mildred that she should be wary of Veda. He draws a very apt analogy to a snake, and at Mildred’s indignant exclamation, “Are you calling my child a snake?” the teacher replies, “No—is worse than snake! Is colaratura soprano!” Veda is the ultimate diva, a wicked narcissist with boundless capacity to take advantage of others. Still, the real tragedy of Mildred Pierce is not so much in the fact that Veda is a demon and Mildred is her innocent victim; rather it’s in Mildred’s persistent blindness to the fact, Mildred’s desperation for Veda’s approval so intense that it twists Mildred into a pale caricature of her, attempting manipulations of her own without any of Veda’s calculating skill at it. And here, too, perhaps Cain deserves credit for capturing a certain strain of maternal attachment, which starts out as merely a doting mother’s great hopes for her confident, willful child, but grows into something desperate and terribly unhealthy.
There is one facet of Mildred Pierce that I have to mention: its deployment of the brassy-best-friend archetype, such a staple of midcentury entertainment (think of any number of characters played by Celeste Holm; or I Love Lucy’s Ethel Mertz). The archetype here is instantiated in one Lucy Gessler, Mildred’s hard-boiled next-door neighbor, who nudges Mildred into her new life after she throws her husband out at the book’s opening. Mrs Gessler is there every step of the way with coarse sexual advice, bootleg hooch (one of the more interesting social history aspects of the book is the interaction between early-Depression and late-Prohibition forces), and business acumen that makes Mildred’s first restaurant a howling success. The quick-thinking Mrs Gessler is always ready to “pull something,” as she does to save Mildred’s bacon when her ex-in-laws and neighbors start to gossip about Mildred’s fledgling affair with Monte. When Prohibition ends, Mrs Gessler leans on Mildred to add a bar to her restaurant, naturally appointing herself bartender, and it’s hard to imagine a better place for her. I wish every one of us could have a Mrs Gessler of our very own.
Veda Pierce has got to be in my top 3 most hated literary characters, what a loathsome little creature! And Mildred made so many questionable life choices connected to Veda that I didn't know what to think about her by the end. But the writing was so engaging that I had trouble putting the book down and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more Cain.
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
About half way through I nearly set it down because I didn't like any of the characters except for the next door neighbor, Mrs. Gessler. But I stuck with it, and was rewarded with interesting and complex relationships. I also ended up appreciating the flawed Bert.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes