Review: The Big Town

The Big Town by Ring Lardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A comedy of errors, told in the voice (and dialect) of a cigar salesman from South Bend, Indiana, whose wife and sister-in-law inherit a bundle from their war-profiteer stepfather and decide to relocate to New York and find a rich husband for the sister-in-law.

The narrative voice is wry, even cynical. The women are 1920s "dames" - there's a bit of a war-of-the-sexes theme, though I got the sense that the narrator's relationship with his wife was a lot stronger than he likes to make out, and that the jibes that he and his sister-in-law trade are at least somewhat affectionate.

They stay in several different places - an expensive hotel, a rented apartment on Riverside Drive, a high-end Long Island boarding house, and last of all a theatrical hotel that's a bit more downmarket, since the income they have from the interest on the money is starting to run low. Everything in New York, at least if you want to move in the circles they want to move in to get a husband for Katie, is viciously expensive. Along the way, they meet a variety of potential suitors, including a Wall Street trader, a rich older man, a daring young aviator, a racehorse owner and a comedian at the Ziegfeld Follies. There's something wrong with all of them, but it's a different thing each time, as is the reason the relationship fails to click. The changes of location and the various characters mean that it isn't just the same try-fail cycle repeated with minor variations, though it definitely has an episodic feel.

The situations and characters are both absurd and believable, and the overall shape of the plot makes sense. It's a solid piece of comedy writing, not as lighthearted as Wodehouse or Jerome - more in the vein of a midwestern 1920s Mark Twain - but, to me at least, amusing and enjoyable. I'll watch out for other books from this author.

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