Scan barcode
A review by bargainsleuth
The Manhattan Girls: A Novel of Dorothy Parker and Her Friends by Gill Paul
3.0
For this and other book reviews, visit www.bargain-sleuth.com
I’ve read two other Gill Paul books, Jackie and Maria: A Novel of Jackie Kennedy & Maria Callas and The Collector’s Daughter: A Novel of the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb. I enjoyed them both, as they surrounded subjects for which I’m familiar. Yet when I picked up The Manhattan Girls, I knew nothing of Dorothy Parker other than that she was a writer and was a member of the Algonquin Round Table.
The book is full of sharp and witty women and men and their banter. My main problem throughout the book was that without having prior knowledge of Parker and her friends, I had no idea what was real and what was imagined. In one sense, that’s freeing for the reader, but in another sense, it’s really hard to see the fact in the fiction. I wished there were an afterward revealing what was true or not, where liberties were taken, and what happened to the people described in the novel.
While I found the writing top-notch as usual for a Gill Paul novel, I had trouble connecting because of the above-mentioned facts. I still feel like I didn’t know Dorothy Parker all that well. I did enjoy finding out more about the starting up and the early days of The New Yorker magazine. I would recommend for anyone who enjoys historical fiction set in the 1920s, or for fans of Dorothy Parker and her friends.
I’ve read two other Gill Paul books, Jackie and Maria: A Novel of Jackie Kennedy & Maria Callas and The Collector’s Daughter: A Novel of the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb. I enjoyed them both, as they surrounded subjects for which I’m familiar. Yet when I picked up The Manhattan Girls, I knew nothing of Dorothy Parker other than that she was a writer and was a member of the Algonquin Round Table.
The book is full of sharp and witty women and men and their banter. My main problem throughout the book was that without having prior knowledge of Parker and her friends, I had no idea what was real and what was imagined. In one sense, that’s freeing for the reader, but in another sense, it’s really hard to see the fact in the fiction. I wished there were an afterward revealing what was true or not, where liberties were taken, and what happened to the people described in the novel.
While I found the writing top-notch as usual for a Gill Paul novel, I had trouble connecting because of the above-mentioned facts. I still feel like I didn’t know Dorothy Parker all that well. I did enjoy finding out more about the starting up and the early days of The New Yorker magazine. I would recommend for anyone who enjoys historical fiction set in the 1920s, or for fans of Dorothy Parker and her friends.