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This 1955 crime novel has a very strong start, vividly depicting the plight of Addie, an elderly widow fallen upon hard times. She moves to New York from Georgia to live with her son and his wife, and discovers to her dismay that they clearly don't want her around. One day, while wandering disconsolately in a park, she meets her neighbor Kate, also an elderly widow living with her daughter and his husband, who also don't want her around. Kate is a Hungarian immigrant, but despite surface differences the women hit it off.
Unfortunately, the actual story becomes a much more conventional crime drama when Kate's son-in-law is murdered; less about the widows' friendship, and more about the not-that-interesting twists and turns of the case. Though I did love one particular element.
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My habit of picking up completely random out of print books I never heard of from garage sales often pays off, one way or another. After a strong start, Widow's Plight ends up only okay. But it introduced me to the existence of the amazing Ruth Fenisong, Jewish lesbian leftist PUPPET PLAYWRIGHT and mystery writer.
It's unclear where Ruth went to school or what sort of employment she had in her twenties, but when during the Depression the American national government's Works Progress Administration launched the Federal Theater Project, Ruth was one of some 350 people in the project who worked with marionettes in children's puppet theater.
...
Certainly some of Ruth's plays suggest a left-liberal slant, however, like The Children of Salem, about two Puritan children who nearly provoke the killing of a purported witch (the play was billed as a "strong indictment of superstition"), and The Boiled Eggs, which has been recently reprinted.
The latter play is a mordant satire in which a ruthlessly scheming restaurant owner (Landlord) and his equally atrocious Wife. attempting to fleece a simple Farmer of $2000 for a meal of a dozen boiled (and very rotten) eggs, have the tables deftly turned on them by a wily Lawyer and a goodhearted Waiter. By the end of the play the waiter has joined a union and is picketing the Landlord's restaurant, which in a literal burst of poetic justice is destroyed when the remaining rotten eggs explode.
Unfortunately, the actual story becomes a much more conventional crime drama when Kate's son-in-law is murdered; less about the widows' friendship, and more about the not-that-interesting twists and turns of the case. Though I did love one particular element.
( Read more... )
My habit of picking up completely random out of print books I never heard of from garage sales often pays off, one way or another. After a strong start, Widow's Plight ends up only okay. But it introduced me to the existence of the amazing Ruth Fenisong, Jewish lesbian leftist PUPPET PLAYWRIGHT and mystery writer.
It's unclear where Ruth went to school or what sort of employment she had in her twenties, but when during the Depression the American national government's Works Progress Administration launched the Federal Theater Project, Ruth was one of some 350 people in the project who worked with marionettes in children's puppet theater.
...
Certainly some of Ruth's plays suggest a left-liberal slant, however, like The Children of Salem, about two Puritan children who nearly provoke the killing of a purported witch (the play was billed as a "strong indictment of superstition"), and The Boiled Eggs, which has been recently reprinted.
The latter play is a mordant satire in which a ruthlessly scheming restaurant owner (Landlord) and his equally atrocious Wife. attempting to fleece a simple Farmer of $2000 for a meal of a dozen boiled (and very rotten) eggs, have the tables deftly turned on them by a wily Lawyer and a goodhearted Waiter. By the end of the play the waiter has joined a union and is picketing the Landlord's restaurant, which in a literal burst of poetic justice is destroyed when the remaining rotten eggs explode.