Skip to main content

Review: The Jewel Box, by Anna Davis


The Jewel Box is set in London in the spring and early summer of 1927. Grace Rutherford is a copywriter for an ad agency by day, but by night she’s Diamond Sharp, a girl-about-town and newspaper columnist. She starts an affair with Dexter O’Connell, a famous American writer, while simultaneously attracted to John Cramer, another American writer abroad, who befriends Grace’s sister Nancy, a widowed mother of two The “present” is interspersed with scenes from the “past” (the War).

The Jewel Box is an exceedingly charming book. Anna Davis takes the reader to a world where people drank gin fizzes and smoked cigarettes in long holders at places with names like the Tour Eiffel or the Kit Kat Club, when people danced the Charleston and women wore their hair in Louise Brooks-style bobs. Grace/Diamond IS the flapper of the 1920s, but, like everyone else of her generation, she’s haunted by the past. How does one, as Grace reflects, “draw a line under recent events and move on?”

Characterization is very strong in this novel. O’Connell and Cramer, I noticed, are very much like F. Scott Fitzgerald, in many ways—I won’t go into them so as not to spoil the story overmuch. Suffice it to say that The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night probably had a lot of influence on this book—not so much in terms of overall writing style as in plot. The back of this novel says that it’s about secrets and lies, but it’s also about betrayal, too—betrayal of the most insidious kind. In fact, you might end up even despising Grace a little bit.

As the author says in interview questions at the end of the book, there’s a specific reason why she set the book in the spring and summer of 1927. The “past” in mentioned often, but it’s sort of glossed over. Maybe that was the author’s intention—to take the focus and put it on the happy events in Grace’s life, not the ones that brought so much heartache. As it is, this novel is written in a light-hearted, funny tone (especially the “excerpts” from Diamond’s column that start off each chapter). There’s an “introduction” to The Jewel Box at the end (kind of contradictory, but whatever), a short piece on the history of the columnist, and a rather silly list of discussion questions. Much more interesting are the questions the author answers at the end of the novel, which explains a lot about the impetus behind the writing of The Jewel Box. In all, this is a hugely compelling novel, one which sometimes gave me a lot to think about.

Comments

Alyce said…
I love books that let me enter another world and time, and this sounds like it would do that. I also enjoyed The Great Gatsby, so this book appeals to me because of that too.
Unknown said…
Thanks for this lovely notice!
Anna Davis
www.annadavis.co.uk

Popular posts from this blog

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars