Twenties Girl

My reading of this book was interspersed with regular visits to Google. I looked up all things twenties. From crooning saxophones to flighty flappers to shingled hair to the Charleston to Cloche hats to Broadway (nicknamed Satan’s Circus)…all things insane and outrageous caught my fancy. The Roaring Twenties was the stop-gap between two World Wars and the ladies of the day were rebellious and spirited. World War I had decimated a generation of young men and in it’s aftermath, the young girls refused to sit around, waiting for the existing gentlemen to make a formal indication of their intentions. Instead, the Flappers (as they were called) slipped into shimmery frocks, stuck jaunty feathers in their headbands, stepped out of their cloistered existences and had a swingin’ time!

Say hello to Sadie Lancaster, one such Flapper from 1929. Only now, the year is 2009 and Sadie is a ghost…a ghost who has decided to haunt her frazzled grand-niece, Lara Lington. Lara’s plate of woes is overflowing. She is a corporate head-hunter of a sinking firm and has a business partner who is cooling her heels in Goa. Lara has also been dumped by her boyfriend, Josh. And to top it all, she’s seems to be a constant source of disappointment to her parents. So, when a screechy, pushy and temperamental ghost starts telling her to find an antique dragonfly necklace, Lara is convinced that she’s finally gone round the bend.

But co-existing with a ghost from the 1920s can be quite nifty. Suddenly, she’s dressing up in drop-waists and cloche hats and indelible makeup and dancing with sullen but rakishly handsome men. She is getting a chance to make up with her old boyfriend and find out what made him run scared. She’s caught up in the mystery of a missing necklace and is playing amateur detective with a vengeance. And amidst it all, she’s having a rip-roaring time.

Twenties Girl is one of Sophie Kinsella’s better offerings. Lara Lington is a heroine who runs true to Kinsella form. She’s a bit batty and frivolous, has an interesting fashion-sense, an almost non-existent business sense and the tendency to whine and whinge and land herself into embarrassing situations at the drop of a hat. But also true to the author’s style, she develops a backbone, business acumen, the ability to “get-her-man” and set things right by the time you hit the last few pages. Sadie was an odd character. I oscillated between immense irritation at her self-absorbed shrill fits and a sense of sympathy for her disappointment at never having accounted for much in her 105 years. And although the book was a tad on the long drawn out side, the only thing that kept me hooked was the interesting premise of getting a glimpse into the glorious twenties. I enjoyed scouring the net for tiny peeks into an era which was glorious, uninhibited and most definitely “the bees-knees”!