The Unfortunates
The ebook edition of a classic novel from the bestselling author of ‘The Future Homemakers of America’.What hope is there for Poppy Minkel? She has kinky hair, out-sticking ears, too yellow a neck and an appetite for fun, and her mother Dora despairs of ever finding her a husband, despite the Minkel's Mustard fortune that seasons these dubious attractions. When Daddy disappears, Poppy's tendency to the unusual is quietly allowed to flourish. World War I opens new horizons. With never a moment of self-doubt, she invents her own extraordinary life in step with the unfolding century.
Читать The Unfortunates онлайн беплатно
LAURIE GRAHAM
The Unfortunates
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2002
Copyright © Laurie Graham 2002
Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover illustration © Rachel Ross
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007234066
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007390694 Version: 2017-03-30
From the reviews of The Unfortunates:
‘If you see people creasing up with laughter on public transport, this is probably what they’re reading’
The Times
‘Fresh, funny and smart, a novel that reels from the Titanic to jazz age New York’
Observer
‘Epic and very, very funny’
Daily Mail
‘A wildly funny novel, which is often on the brink of being a wildly tragic one’
Sunday Times
‘Set in New York, France and England, this witty book is brimming with irony while an understated sadness bubbles just under the surface. Laurie Graham’s last novel, The Future Homemakers of America, was a bestseller. With deft prose and a Nancy Mitford style, her seventh novel looks like repeating that success’
Irish Independent
‘Laurie Graham is a writer with a remarkably malleable comic voice … Poppy, like Nancy Mitford’s Linda Radlet and The Bolter, is a thrill-seeker with a penchant for romance, brightly coloured clothing, elaborate cocktails and effervescent company’
Guardian
‘A compelling read’
Hello!
‘A fantastic, engrossing read’
Glamour
To Joan Fitzgerald
Contents
It was just as well I had ripped off my Ear Correcting Bandages. Had I been bound up in my usual bedtime torture-wear, I would never have heard my mother’s screams.
The bandages were part of my preparation for the great husband hunt. I was only fifteen years old, but my mother recognized a difficult case when she saw one. She had taken up the challenge the day after my twelfth birthday and never spared herself since.
‘The early bird, Poppy,’ she always said, when I complained. ‘The early bird.’
And so, assisted by my aunt, she began an all-fronts campaign to catch me a worm.
I was forbidden candy and other waist-thickening substances. I was enrolled for classes in piano, singing and cotillion dancing, and spent an hour every day in a backboard, during which I practiced French pronunciation whilst a series of Irish maids tried to straighten my hair, or at least, defeat its natural wiriness into the kind of soft loose curls preferred by husbands.
On alternate days my neck was painted with Gomper’s Patent Skin Whitener, to coax out of it a certain oriental tinge. The label advised using the paste no oftener than once a week. But as my mother said, what did they know? They hadn’t seen my neck.
As to my nose, she knew the limits of home improvements. I was to go to a beauty doctor in Cincinnati, as soon as I was sixteen, and have a little cartilage shaved off.
Meanwhile she applied herself to the correction of my protruding ears. She designed an adjustable bandeau to hold them flat against my skull while I slept and had the Irish girl make them up for me in a selection of nightwear colours.
‘So you can choose, you see?’ Ma explained. ‘According to your frame of mind.’
And, gauging my frame of mind all too well, my aunt informed me that some day, when I had grown in wisdom, I would be grateful for their efforts.
The alternative to all this was that I would be left an old maid.
I knew what an old maid was. My cousin Addie was being one up in Duluth, Minnesota, riding around all day with her dogs and not wearing corsets. And I knew what marriage was too. My sister Honey had recently married Harry Glaser and as soon as the marrying was done she had to leave home and put up her hair. As far as I could see she wasn’t allowed to play with her dolls anymore, and she had hardly any time for cutting out pretty things for her scrapbook. She had had to go to tea parties all the time, but never appear too eager about cake, and whenever she came to call Ma would make mysterious inquiries.
