Honestly, it's some time since I've been as excited about a book as I was about Summer at Tiffany. New York? The forties? That cover? 83-year-old Marjorie Hart's memoir of the 1945 summer she spent working for the famous and glamorous store almost seemed as if it was designed with me in mind.
Along with her college friend Marty, Marjorie got a job as a Page at Tiffany, making the two of them the first women to work on the shop floor. Customers included Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich and the job was wonderful, but poorly paid. Marjorie and Marty shared an apartment, which was used as a weekend city base for their other college friends as they enjoyed New York's sights and nightlife.
I loved this book just as much as I thought I would. Adriana Trigiani's comment on the cover, "Charming and delicious..." is spot on (and Trigiani's novel of working in a department store in '50s New York, Lucia Lucia, is equally charming and delicious). I loved all the details: joining two million people in Times Square to read the announcement of Victory in Japan, lunch from the Automat (which you may remember from That Touch of Mink), getting sunburned at the beach...
It seems like another (and despite the war, much more civilised) world. Summer of Tiffany is a book I can see myself rereading when modern life gets to be just too much.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Like this? Try Lucia Lucia by Adriana Trigiani
