In Another Girl's Shoes

"from the Evening Public Register (Philadelphia) 18 Aug 1916] Mrs. Oliver Onions (Berta Ruck has a formula, clever, adaptable and amusing. "In Another Girl's Shoes" is built on that formula and so is the story of an official fiancee. Whether the other works of this author are so constructed we do not know. The two mentioned are clever enough to justify repetition. "In Another Girl's Shoes" (Dodd, Mead & Co.) is the story of a charming young woman who is forced by circumstances to impersonate a war widow. The young man who biffed off and got married and biffed off a moment later to the trenches and was biffed off into eternity after several months left his moving-picture wife to his parents, who weren't her sort. So she shoved another girl into her place, and the young man wasn't killed after all, and the complications are such that you don't know how it is going to turn out, especially as there are two others, a man and a girl, mixed up in it. But it does turn out. So the book will do for the hammock. It is faultily printed and badly proof read.

As you know, I'm all about Berta and WWI, so this book was right up my alley. A lot of readers today say it gives off strong "While You Were Sleeping" vibes, and 100% on that take. It reads like it would translate easily to film and, indeed, it was in 1917.

It's not my favorite of Berta's early work, though. An overall positive review from 1916 in the Los Angeles Evening Public complained about "the prolixity of much of its dialogue" -- that the characters "talk and talk but most of it is inane chatter" and that's a fair critism: it could have definitely been slimmed down and would have benefitted, throughout, from a more zealous editor. The main character is also less engaging than many of Berta's creations -- for a poverty-stricken orphan who scores such a soft landing, she complains A LOT.

The two other female characters are more interesting (I'm with Viv: a girl should think twice about a man who'd be "a bit of a nuisance about his wife keeping on with her profesh!") and I was disappointed when one [spoiler alert] fell victim to an unexpected and unnecessary spot of melodrama that felt borrowed from A Lad with Wings.

There's some classicism -- the sense that the Cockney actress isn't, and couldn't be "our sort" and some down-the-nosing at the nouveau riche. Being Berta, though, there's also some interesting stuff with gender norms: George is one of those "ultra-masculine men who do show that tiny touch of a femininine 'finish'": he has a soft voice, he "quote[s] verse like a woman or an artist", his mood changes "like an April day, or a woman" and, when Rose caresses him "the cheek below my palm [was] as smooth and fine in texture as that of another girl". And, yet, he isn't at all "effeminate" -- he is, Rose decides, "steel under velvet". Rival Phillippa, for her part, is beautiful, but highly educated and fiercely intelligent and seems dissatisfied with the limits of her gender role. She feels a great deal of affection for softer, sweeter, more conventionally-gendered Rose -- "if I were a man I would marry you."

In sum, not a Berta highlight, but still a good read. As the NYT review (27 Aug 1916) put it, like so much of her work, IAGS's "marshmallow fiction but with a piquant sauce". May not be to everyone's taste, but I, certainly, eat it up.