![]() ![]() But though Evie acknowledges this with a passing reference, Blundell has her sights set on something far more surprising to a young British readership: antisemitism. One might expect a novel concerned with society's injustices and set in 1950s America to centre on the segregation of black from white. Every era has its own conventions and dirty secrets, and she teases these out and weaves them into Evie's desire to step out of the shadow of her blonde bombshell mother.Īt the hotel, Evie is smitten by a fellow guest, Peter Coleridge, whose good looks, charm and sophistication win over the ladies - though not Joe, who was in the same army unit overseas. But where Blundell really scores is with the nuances and vagaries of the time. There's talk of Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce. The sense of period is nicely evoked and never overplayed. Evie's not in the photo because she doesn't fit the postwar fairytale. ![]() The headline ran: "And the dish ran away with the spoon". A photographer from Life magazine took a picture of them on the steps of City Hall. ![]() Joe and Bev married when Evie was nine, after GI Joe returned from the war. But Blundell, if not Evie, hints all may not be what it seems. The reason Evie is there with her mother, Beverly, and stepfather, Joe - in the rainy season, when those in the know give Palm Beach a wide berth - is an apparently spur-of-the-moment decision by Joe. ![]()
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