The Strategy of Suzanne

[from brief description on flyleaf]

Suzanne, the heroine of Mabel Barnes-Grudy's novel, does not hold or besiege a city, nor a man's heart -- it is a case of him besieging hers. Her strategy is directed along much more unusual lines, to wit, holding up the sale of an old house and garden.

Why she does this, and how she achieves it, the reader will find out for himself by perusing this amusing story.

My copy of The Strategy of Suzanne is inscribed, on the free flyleaf

To Lily

Holiday Memories

1942

Bess

I love this. Strategy was published in 1929, so the fact that Bess was gifting her friend a used book warms my heart. I wonder if it still had the dustjacket? I've never seen one for this title...

As stories go, this one is classic MB-G: it starts strong, has charming characters, is well-written, with warmth and humor, and it...kind of peters out at the end. Like many novels from its period, it features, as nemesis, a parent -- in this case Suzanne's malade imaginaire of a mother -- who's clearly got a narcissistic personality disorder and whose abuse has shaped and stunted the mc's young life. These narratives are always painful to read because you really get a sense of how limited the options were for girls of the time, how dependent they were, how enmeshed in family relationships, and how desperately, hopelessly stuck that could feel. Suzanne, at the beginning, is longing for a husband, but only because it seems like "the only way out." (15) Here, as in the others -- at least those with happy endings -- the main character's growth arc lies in finding the strength to stand up to their parent: to assert their right to make their own life decisions and find their own joy. Suzanne, inspired by a serendipitous friendship, and with the help of an unexpected bequest and a truculent quasi-fairy-godmother of a paternal aunt, finds that she's actually got a determined, resourceful, independent spirit. If any character in Strategy ends up playing the white knight, it's her, and that's a nice twist on the tale.

Like many of Mabel Barnes-Grundy's books, romance here takes a backseat to personal growth, but Suzanne's two potential love interests are interesting in themselves: one, a poor 30-year-old writer with tuberculosis; the other, a WWI vet with a lingering injury and a great firmness of purpose (the fact that this demonstrates itself in what we would call stalkerish behavior and that they refer to him as 'a Mussolini' is a bit unfortunate). The first world war actually looms large in the book's background: there are "so few brothers" (67) since the war and when it comes to securing a husband, as Aunt Jeanette indelicately puts it, "There are so few stags now -- you've got to stalk 'em." (106)

I think this is the first book I've read where a main character had tuberculosis and, spoiler alert, didn't die from it. It's also the first I've read set in Lausanne, Switzerland, and there's a lot of fun period detail about the city and its environs. It's a shame that the action fizzles a bit towards the end, but with Barnes-Grundy you pretty much have to go in expecting that -- she really just seems to lack the authorly stamina to bring it in hot. The Strategy of Suzanne is by no means her worst in this regard, and, if you like her work as much as I do, it's still absolutely worth a read!