They Never Get Tired

New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. Very Good in Good+ dj. 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. [spine a bit turned, moderate discoloration to cloth along front joint, one-time owner's signature on ffep, vintage bookseller's label (The Personal Book Shop, Boston) on ffep; jacket shows wear at all corners, tiny chip at top edge of front panel, short closed tear and associated creasing at bottom front hinge, a few small edge-tears]. "They" might never get tired, but I wonder if the same can be said of a reader who slogs his or her way through this purportedly comic novel about "the haphazard and somehow enticing life of the Rivett family who think they're artists and count their art an excuse for anything -- brittle, exciting people who exaggerate ordinary experiences until every meeting becomes an adventure and every flirtation a love affair. Here is a home where routine and convention are strangers, where only the unexpected happens, and pandemonium rules the day." (And also where, to judge from the somewhat Gahan Wilson-ish dust jacket illustration, any sense of fashion is nowhere to be found.) I suspect this "young author" from Wilmington, Delaware -- who, per the jacket blurb, had her first novel (this one) accepted for publication when she was a mere babe of twenty (but who looks more like a dour maiden of forty in her photo) -- might have gone up to the Big Town and been inspired by a matinee performance of "You Can't Take It With You." (Kaufman and Hart's madcap-family comedy premiered on Broadway in December 1936; this book was published on August 30, 1937; I'm just sayin'.) The kindly New York Times reviewer ventured that "Miss Macadam's second novel will probably be better," but alas, this appears to have been her one and only published book. .