A review by deegee24
Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

5.0

This is surely Cain's masterpiece, and one of the best American novels of its time. It is not a detective or crime story (though a detective does appear in one scene), and it is not written in the hard-boiled manner of Cain's earlier fiction like "The Postman Always Rings Twice." The writing style is accessible, but with highly distinctive touches in rendering characters, settings, and dialogue. Set during the Great Depression, it tells of a hard-working single mother who loves her ungrateful, musically gifted daughter beyond all reason, and pays a high price for that love. It reminds me of the fifties-era Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray, in that it has all the ingredients of a soap opera, but hits you in the gut like tragedy.