Rona Jaffe

In 1952, after the unhappy breakup of her engagement, twenty-year-old Caroline Bender starts her first job as a secretary in the typing pool of Fabian Publications in New York City, where she joins four other young employees, each with their individual goals and dreams, at the New York publishing company. Reprint.

A Novel

The Best of Everything

sarah cherian

ananya

rachel

When it first published in 1958, Rona Jaffe's debut novel electrified readers who saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office; naive country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Now a classic, and as page-turning as when it first came out, The Best of Everything portrays their lives and passions with intelligence, affection, and prose as sharp as a paper cut. Includes a foreword by the author.

Sarah Escorsa

Rebecka S.

Kiya Robinson

Eva Talmadge

'This was New York . . . the marvelous secret things people did inside those tall buildings at the cocktail hour were the things he did every evening, and tonight it was all going to happen to her.' New York, 1952. Four young women have come to the city: to find love, to build their careers and to savour the indefinable optimism of the times. Caroline is the college graduate, determined to escape the typing pool and become an editor. April is the beautiful country girl with a penchant for disastrous romances. Aspiring actress Gregg is tangled in a dangerous love affair with a playwright; and divorcée Barbara writes about lipsticks by day and cares alone for her daughter by night. The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe's frank, scandalous and thrilling 1958 novel, follows them as they negotiate office romances, workplace politics, broken engagements, tiny apartments, lecherous bosses, heartbreak and lasting friendship. 'Most career girls, past or present, will respond with the shock of authenticity' The Saturday Review 'It harks back to a saner time when choosing progress and modernity was as straightforward as ordering dinner - 'Two Scotches with water on the side, and two steaks'' Julie Burchill

The Best of Everything A Novel

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