Alice Adams

Name: Alice Adams
Rating: 3.607 (63 reviews)
ISBN: i37TRD9gnq

By Booth Tarkington

Publisher Description

Alice Adams is Booth Tarkington’s second novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, just three years after his novel The Magnificent Ambersons won it. The novel tells the story of Alice, a Midwestern girl who grows up in a lower-middle-class family just after World War I. Alice meets a wealthy young man and tries to win his affection, despite her lower-class upbringing.

Alice Adams was twice adapted for film, with the second adaptation starring Katherine Hepburn and earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

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Alice Adams Reviews

3.5

ChefChristian

Created 4 months ago

Krystelle 🧛🏻‍♀️

Created 5 months ago

“I know what it was trying to do. I just feel it did it dispassionately and without any kind of flair.”

Jonas

Created 8 months ago

Ben | The Immersion Library

Created 9 months ago

“"I suppose about the only good in pretending is the fun we get ou tof fooling ourselves that we fool somebody." Booth Tarkington, the American male Jane Austen, portrays a lower-middle class family and the prototypical roles each member plays. A father responsible for the welfare of his family but also his dignity; a mother who wants nothing more than to provide the best for her children and give them the kind of life others in her position would envy; a son who rebels against high society only to find himself in trouble; and, of course, a daugher who wants to glue it all together. I will focus on these characters rather than the specific plot of the story. Virgil Adams, a man of stress-induced passion and poor health, finds dignity in holding to his lifelong dedication to a company that has kept his family in meager economic conditions. The reader first meets him under the care of a nurse where he exhibits an obstinate attitude. I immediately noticed his adherence to idioms with which he grew up and have lost their significance to progress and the intrusion of that outside progress into his rooms. Virgil Adams believes in an older America in which the "rat race" held little sway over integrity, dedication and hard work. Even though his family does not have much, he eventually succumbs to his wife's demands regarding his career and catastrophe follows. I struggle with Mrs. Adams, Virgil's wife, who finally succeeds in influencing Virgil to change careers. One cannot fault her desperate desire to provide the best life for her children. Yet one can question how she defines "best life". For Mrs. Adams, her children need all the best material things which would prove a means to high-society acceptance and social prospects. In this, Mrs. Adams seems to live in an old aristocratic European world rather than a new twentieth century American one (or perhaps there never has been a difference). Unfortunately, her character never changes, but I empathize with her sorrow in watching her children judged and marginalized by those with power even though this passion likely does her children more harm than good. Her son, Walter rebukes high society conformity and goes his own way. For this, I admire him. At one point, I hoped that Alice would adopt his "damn the man" attitude and find some freedom in life. However, at the end, Walter enjoys the least freedom of anyone in the family. With his mindset, he always risked this outcome. When comparing him to Alice, and imagining high society norms as shackles, one notices how Walter seemingly enjoyed the most freedom in the beginning while Alice enjoyed very little. At the end, the arcs completely invert against each other. For myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Alice's arc towards self-acceptance, if not discovery. She spent all her energy bridging the gap between her parents while simultaneously disguising herself for acceptance into high society. Tarkington goes to some effort in showcasing Alice's quality to Arthur Russell by supressing family status and society pressures. But he cannot surpress Alice's inner-conflict between her multiple facades and her true self. And while the reader hopes in a rewarding acceptance by, or vindictive retaliation against, high society, they soon realize the higher importance in Alice accepting herself. Nothing else can lead to the kind of happiness she and her mother want for her. And yet this transformation does not come without severe growing pains. "We do keep looking ahead to things as if they'd finish something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything. They're just part of going on." She finds the strength to go on when she acknowledges the futility of her efforts for acceptance and in this she truly matures and becomes her own woman; something none of her fake friends will experience or have. Perhaps in this redemption it is she, not high society, who find themselves rich and powerful. I offer a standing slow-clap for Ms. Alice Adams! Go get 'em, kid.”

Erin

Created 10 months ago

About Booth Tarkington

Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered America's greatest living author. Several of his stories were adapted to film. During the first quarter of the 20th century, Tarkington, along with Meredith Nicholson, George Ade, and James Whitcomb Riley helped to create a Golden Age of literature in Indiana.