Glitter & Ash: Books Set In The 1920's & 1930's
/100 Years In Books: The Decades Series
For many during this period of history, with the growth of cities, the rise of a consumer culture, the upsurge of mass entertainment, and the so-called "revolution in morals and manners", there was a sense of freedom from the restrictions of the Victorian period that came before. The younger generation rebelled against traditional taboos while their elders engaged in a frenzy of apprehension. But this period also resulted in significant economic unrest and suffering with The Great Depression providing a dramatic end to a recent surge in prosperity.
As you might imagine, the combination of these things resulted in a pivotal and fruitful period in literature, with decades that were bookended by two World Wars. Balanced were the themes of hedonism and sexuality that began emerging in the novels of the era alongside the disillusionment and cynicism that came to the surface in the stories of the aftermath of war. This encapsulated a time when people allowed themselves to indulge in the allure of glamour and frivolity even as they began to grasp the fleeting nature of good fortune.
Trends saw genre stories expanded into new directions with the birth of dystopian fiction and noir crime novels, offering up more engaging books for readers. We also saw the first appearance of what would become the ubiquitous self-help book. Critics became concerned that the onset of the “bestseller” meant the demise of the literary experience. An excellent instinct considering that was eighty plus years ago and remains a worry today.
Tag along as we wander through reads set in these decades. Some will be emblematic of the times and others will play with our recollections and perceptions. All will offer up an experience that can only be found in the pages of well written books.
Books Set In The 1920’s…
Jazz – Toni Morrison
Jazz is the story of Joe Trace, a middle-aged door-to-door salesman who murders his 18-year-old mistress, Dorcas. At the funeral, his wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This passionate story of love and obsession is filled with the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life in Harlem in the 1920’s. Toni Morrison's magical prose gives this novel the same cadence and rhythm found in the jazz music of the era.
The Other Typist – Suzanne Randell
Confessions are Rose’s job. As typist for the NYPD, she sits in judgment like a high priestess. Criminals come before her to admit their transgressions and with a few strokes of the keys, she seals their fate. But while she may hear about shootings, knifings, and crimes of passion, as soon as she leaves the room, she reverts to a dignified and proper lady. With a new addition to the typing pool that’s about to change!
The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters
A psychological and dramatic tour de force. The year is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned and the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. In a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants, life is about to be transformed as Mrs. Wray and her daughter Frances are obliged to take in lodgers. With their arrival the house and its inhabitants will be shaken up in unexpected ways.
City Of Flickering Light – Juliette Fay
Its July 1921, “flickers” are all the rage, and Irene has just declared her own independence by jumping off a moving train to escape her fate in a traveling burlesque show. When her friends, fellow dancer Millie and comedian Henry, leap after her, the trio finds their way to the bright lights of Hollywood with hopes of making it big in the burgeoning silent film industry. They soon learn that the lure of the silver screen is an illusion.
A Gentleman In Moscow – Amor Towles
Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat, Rostov has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel's doors.
Relative Fortunes – Marlowe Benn
Julia is a sophisticated book lover living in Manhattan with aspirations to launch her own new private press. As a woman, she still must fight for what is hers, including the inheritance that her estranged half -brother, Philip, is challenging. When another woman, Naomi, an ardent suffragist from a wealthy family, dies of an apparent suicide, Julia is skeptical. Philip, also skeptical, proposes a wager, if Julia can prove that Naomi was in fact murdered, he'll drop his claims to Julia's inheritance.
Call Your Daughter Home – Deb Spera
Set in Branchville, South Carolina in 1924, this historical novel tells the story of motherhood and womanhood. Centering around three women at a crossroads; Gertrude, Retta, and Annie. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make a difficult decision in order to save her daughters. Retta is a first-generation freed slave who comes to Gertrude's aid. And Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude a job. Despite seemingly having nothing in common, these three women unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town.
Dreamland Burning – Jennifer Latham
When Rowan finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the present and the past. Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, the authors lightning pace brings the Tulsa race riots of 1921 to blazing life and raises important questions about the complex state of US race relations, both yesterday and today.
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn – Betty Smith
From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often-harsh life of Williamsburg demanded fortitude, intelligence, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior, she stays strong. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the book is tenderly woven with family connectedness.
A Passage To India – E.M. Forster
A novel set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s that revolves around four unique characters. When one mistakes another of attempting to assault her, we see through a trial and its aftermath the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and the British who rule India at that time.
Books Set In The 1930’s…
Modern Girls – Jennifer S. Brown
In 1935, Dottie is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, she steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So, when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate. Unwed and unsure, and she soon finds herself running out of options.
Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen
Orphaned and penniless at the height of the Depression, Jacob escapes everything he knows by jumping on a passing train, and inadvertently runs away with the circus. So begins Water for Elephants, a darkly beautiful tale about the characters who inhabit the less-than-greatest show on earth. An enchanting page turner that will capture your heart from page one!
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
Memoirs Of A Geisha – Arthur Golden
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly intimate, Nitta tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village, when as a young girl, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair, pouring sake and ultimately competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.
The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah
The author captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of a history seldom seen: the women's war. Telling the stories of two sisters, separated by years, experience, ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France. A heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women.
Rules Of Civility – Amor Towles
On the last night of 1937, Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
Native Son – Richard Wright
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe – Fannie Flagg
A novel of two women; Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women, the irrepressibly dare devilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.
A Handful Of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Set between the wars in the chic upper-middle classes in and around London, A Handful Of Dust is full of horrible people doing horrible things to each other, adding up to a snarky indictment of human behaviour. But it’s not all jokes. There’s despair lurking beneath the brittle laughs, and sadness at the waste of potential. There’s a plot point about reading Dickens that results in the darkest comedy, and perhaps a scathing statement about literature and civilization.
Go Tell It On The Mountain – James Baldwin
With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem. Baldwin's beautifully renders this protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention.
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice. It views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl as her father, a crusading local lawyer, risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime. A true masterwork!
