A compelling satire, Alice Adams details irresistible characteristics of social status in a small Midwestern town. Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their two children are members of the lower middle-class. Their daughter, Alice Adams, wrestles with this economic classification and attempts to make the society folk of the town appreciate her. Because Alice has no social influence nor wealth and her presence is held in disregard by prospective suitors, Mrs. Adams tries to improve the situation by persuading her husband to leave a job he's held all his life and to establish a new career. After much apprehension and in possession of a glue formula stolen from his previous employer, he resigns his mediocre but satisfying employment which puts him in a predicament that leads to his professional downfall. Booth Tarkington's understanding of class rivalries, social condescension, and financial avarice is evident in this tale where his main point indicates that in every joyless moment hope, though unexpected, is attainable. He illustrates how the Adams' laborious efforts are ultimately unsuccessful. Any intrusion by Alice Adams and her mother on the upper class is unlikely and Booth Tarkington's depiction of such is secretly amusing.
About the Author: Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. Tarkington was a world traveller who spent much of his later life in Kennebunkport, Maine, and left his papers to Colby College. At the same time, he was also an unabashed Midwestern regionalist, and set much of his fiction in his native Indiana. One of the more popular American novelists of his time, his The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appeared on the annual best-seller lists a total of nine times. The Penrod novels depict a typical upper-middle class American boy of 1910 vintage, revealing a fine, bookish sense of American humor. Tarkington dramatized several of his novels; some were eventually filmed. In 1928, he published a book of reminiscences, The World Does Move. He illustrated the books of others, including a 1933 reprint of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as his own. He took a close interest in fine art and collectibles, and was a trustee of the John Herron Art Museum. In 1902, he served in the Indiana House of Representatives, which supplied the experiences for his book In the Arena: Stories of Political Life.