BOOK REVIEW: Carney ‘s House Party – Our Grandmoms Were Cool!
Carney ‘s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace – What a delightful book!
I found it in a curious book sale where one could buy boxes of different values and take away as many books as would fit into that box. Carney ‘s House Party was just too gorgeous to pass, with its delightful cover of a girl at the peephole of a door and when you open the cover, it reveals her in her full glory holding a door open. Quite as if Carney opened the door and invited you in to her house party.
The book’s title made me think of the modern house parties popularised by American teen movies, full of high school tropes (jock, cheerleader, nerd, drama kid, geek) and rife with alcohol, awkward/problematic sex capers. But the cover with its windowpane opens (like a door) to reveal a rather old-fashioned but cheerful-looking young woman in grandmotherly gear. It turned out to be a book about teenagers on vacation – in 1911 😃. The titular character depicted on the cover is a popular it girl and with the times. For those times. It made me think of just how cool everyone we think of as old now must have been in their youth.
I had an idea that this book might feel too dated or prudish for me. But I savoured the memory of A Girl Called Chris which was also a lucky find at a secondhand bookshop. That story is also set several decades before my time and features a teenage girl as the protagonist navigating social barriers, self-esteem issues, friendships, love, loss and joy. The very essence of all coming-of-age stories. Such books have their own feminist value for their insights into the inner lives of girls & women and the complex relationships between us. Thus even the rather moralistic tales of Louisa May Alcott might carry some value for today’s progressive readers, albeit less than the badass Jane Austen. I had hope. And the book did not disappoint.
Every chapter of Carney’s House Party began with a darling illustration. It was comforting to go back to the day of line sketch illustrations. And I was tickled to see how people dressed at the time. The illustration above ‘Carney’s Future in a Handbasket’ had me chuckling as it depicted a group of girls preparing to go for a swim. The chapter describes this scene thus:
“They changed into bathing suits, tying bandana handkerchiefs around their heads and putting on stockings and bathing slippers.”
and later progresses to,
“She wrung the water out of her heavy skirt and wished she could take off her shoes and stockings as she did when swimming alone with her brothers.”
It’s brilliant!
The story itself is a pretty tame one, by today’s YA standards. All about girl talk, gossip, tame flirtations, American pioneer culture and wedding giggles. True, it’s very white and includes terms like ‘Indians’ (to denote Native Americans). But if you’re in the mood to look past those, this is a very fun book.