The Boston Girl – A Review
I read books like The Boston Girl (TBG) (Anita Diamant) as a form of escapism. I know I will not find myself (or my people’s history) in them. TBG is no exception to that rule; even though my people’s history does show up…as a manifestation of Boston’s “First” (read upper class) Families’ ladies club concern about lynching.
Still, I approach it like I would a 1960’s Doris Day/Shirley MacClaine movie: amusing, ahistorical fluff. Now there are hints of darkness in TBG but it’s a footnote type of darkness. Nothing happens that fundamentally impacts the narrator, a young Jewish woman who is traveling along an arc to marriage. I found myself saying “isn’t that nice?” when she found the man who she would eventually marry. Since the thrust of the story is the narrator talking to her granddaughter who’s going to an Ivy League college, it’s obvious the marriage was a success. That’s so nice.
Diary of a mad reader 