The first thing the contemporary reader needs to accept about this 1950s classic is that it’s set in a world as remote from today as that of Jane Austen. Jaffe is looking at coming-of-age stories of three major (and several minor) female characters trying to establish their careers in New York City. In all cases, Finding Mr. Right is one major goal. And in doing so, they stumble from one disastrous relationship to another with predictable results.

Most of the men in the book are lecherous, cheating, abusive, and utterly oblivious to the emotional needs of the young women they wine and dine and bed (if at all possible), and the women, unfortunately, seem to have the collective savvy one might expect of a reasonably bright 16-year-old today.

Characterization, of the women at least, is rich and detailed, and Jaffe creates a picture of the energy, the possibilities, and the power of the city her characters have set out to conquer. There’s an awful lot of boozing here, and all the characters smoke constantly – again, a reflection of the times and the social milieu of the setting. The outrageous sexual discrimination and harassment of the workplace is presented as perfectly normal and something one simply must learn to manage in order to survive. Still, for all the depth and quality of the writing itself, many of the situations are now sad clichés – the dissolute playboy, the philandering husband, the unwanted pregnancy, the emotionally abusive artiste. Contemporary reader may be forgiven for occasionally thinking (or even saying) “Oh, for godsake, girl, dump this loser and get on with your life.”

For all that, the book is worth a read, if only as a measure of how far the feminist movement has come, and – given the immediate recognizability of many of the situations – of how far it still has to go. ( )

The tale of a group of young women whose lives intersect in the typing pool of a 1950 New York publishing house works as both an entertaining exercise in chick lit and a socio-economic investigation of gender and sexual inequality in midcentury America - which is actually intentional, Jaffe confides in the foreward that appeared in my version of the novel.

The girls represent a variety of socio-emotional archetypes: a brainy, ambitious college graduate (Christina), a naive small town girl eager to make her way in the big city (April), the single mother (Barbara), the aspiring actress (Gregg), the shallow, gossipy office manager (Mary Anne). As the story progresses, their lives intertwine with the lives of various men, also representing common archetypes, to include a buffoonish office predator (Mr. Shalimar), a self-loathing alcoholic (Moss), a privileged, arrogant socialite (Dexter), a prep school good guy (Paul), a small town sweetheart (Eddie), a bohemian (likely bisexual) theater producer.

Intentionally or otherwise, what all the subplots have in common is that they provide a lens for examining the uncomfortable relationships that form in a society that offers few alternatives for women other than marriage. In almost every case, the women are forced to tolerate unequal relationships - preyed on by their bosses, forced into sex (and abortions) by demanding boyfriends, courted by married men, led to believe that it is their obligation to flatter the uninteresting men and fix the broken ones. One reads on, hoping our protagonists will eventually find their power (or at least their self-esteem), but the end of the novel is, at best, ambiguous - perhaps reflecting that, at the time this was written, we were still struggling as a culture to identify what constitutes affirmative female sexual agency. (Lest it sound like I'm being too hard on the men in this book, I'm not: in the real world, it may be that many men found these relationships as oppressive as the women did, but that's not something Jaffe explores here.)

If the idea of learning more about the publishing industry intrigues you, just a heads up that you won't find what you're looking for here, the publishing house setting being mostly a pretense for entangling the various storylines. The storytelling is respectable if repetitive - every chapter starts out with a bit about New York street life and/or the weather - and there are lots of those "hi, how are you?" conversations that take up page space without contributing to the plot. But the midcentury ambiance - smokey lounges with names like "The Red Room," boozy cocktail parties, girls in smart sheath dresses and lads lining up for jobs in their fathers' firms - is enjoyably authentic, and the relationships feel distressingly convincing.

Found this to be an interesting bit of time travel - a reminder that while we may have convinced ourselves in the 1950s that we had achieved the height of modernity, our ideas about gender equality had a long way to go, leading to so much unnecessary exploitation and pain. ( )

There's just nothing happening! So much padding and fluff, so much description - where are the things that happen?!

This took me tremendously long to get through, but it was a good long. I had to take breaks to read other books, but I enjoyed returning to the characters.

GREGG THOUGH! SHE DESERVED BETTER! ( )

It is impossible not to think of Mad Men when reading this novel set in 1952 in New York City. It features four young women in their early twenties from different backgrounds who find work at Fabian Publishing Company as secretaries and typists. Among them are those whose only goal is to find lasting love and marriage in a male-dominated world where genders are clearly defined. Drinking to excess is common, as is the thwarting of unwanted advances from senior executive without endangering their jobs. It is interesting to compare today's culture with that of 70 years ago. The book has a soap opera quality that some will find engaging, while others will abandon it as simply lacking any meaningful depth. ( )