A small Midwestern college brings together three very different women in 1955. Sensitive Carol Martin, attending on a scholarship, is from a small Kansas town. Nora Levin is a feisty, brilliant New Yorker. Introverted Julie Hammond is struggling to put her husband through law school. All three share an ambition for fame, riches, and loveNora wanting to be a writer, Carol and Julie aspiring to the stage. The story moves swiftly as the action shifts from Indiana to New York, Hollywood, and Paris, and there's plenty of heartache and happiness.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via Netgalley.

The story of a decade (late 1950s/early 19060s) in the lives of Julie (married at 15 to Doug, a law student, after he got her pregnant), Carol (an orphan who fails to win the scholarship to university she is expecting, but gets to go anyway after she sleeps with the millionaire who makes the awards) and Nora (who writes salacious "confession" stories to fund herself through university after her Jewish parents refuse to do so if she leaves New York). The three meet at Claymore university in Indiana. Julie is working as a waitress to pay for Doug's law studies, but is asked to join an acting class because she is so talented. The "slipper" of the title refers to the Cinderella story and to the dream each girl has for her life. Julie (having had a miscarriage) wants to keep Doug happy and have a happy marriage, but deep down she also yearns to act. Carol has gone to university also aiming to become an actress (really?) and Nora dreams of becoming a famous author.

Carol does indeed become a move star (and ditches her studies immediately) but the film business proves to be as much a curse as a blessing. Nora eventually becomes a best-selling author and Julie, having fallen pregnant again just as Doug ditches her and goes off to become a lawyer, acts first in a soap opera and then also in the movies. The movie business makes up a very large part of this slightly overlong book and we learn a lot about how films were made and the industry operated at that period. There are constant references to real life authors and actresses (e.g. Doris Day, Jean-Paul Sartre) although I had no way of knowing how many of the many people referenced in passing I should have heard of.

The novel makes constant references to the difficulty the characters face as women in putting their careers first. At the end of the story two out of the three are single and tell each other that they love their careers and that it is all worth it, but I have to say that neither of them seem to enjoy their lives that much and I struggled to agree that it had indeed been worth it. While I sympathised completely with Nora leaving Hennessy after he described her writing in such disparaging terms, I fail to understand how exactly he had held her back during the year they spent together. None of the women seemed capable of sitting down with a partner, explaining how much writing or acting meant to them and negotiating to make the relationship work. I appreciate that the 1960s were a different time (they probably all died of lung cancer just after the novel's time frame for one thing), but none of the characters led particularly conventional lives in any case. Surely Norman and Carol were in the ideal position to make things work - he could have just followed her around as he seemed to have no real purpose in life as it was.

Anyway, I cared enough about the characters to want to argue with them about their choices, which is always a good sign. ( )