Frances Parkinson KeyesReseñas

Paul Morphy was the first American Chess player to go to Europe and challenge the first class players. After defeating General Winfield Scott when he was only nine years old, Morphy was the player to beat if you sought distnction in the game on the American Scene. No one established a reputation for doing so. Morphy became a lawyer in New Orleans prior to the Civil War. He toured europe playing and winning matches against the strongest players available in England, Germany and France. Keyes, noting that Morphy never married, and died young, gives him an unhappy love affair,.½

two S. Am sts, Rose & Mariana

I can forgive the hokey writing and dialogue because it reflects a different era than today. However, I feel it fair to critique the plot and characters.
The protagonist is a bit of a wet rag in the beginning, just teaching at a local college and living with a cousin, sort of stringing along a local girl with noncommittal interactions. Then he gets money (more on that in a moment) and a Sabbatical, plus a bit of a mystery to pursue and suddenly he's a go-getting, take charge, fall in love at the drop of a hat kind of guy. I didn't see it. In some moments he's seemingly thick (like getting money together and driving to the middle of nowhere to meet men he already suspects are cons) and then others he has amazing clarity of mind (deducing where intriguing books are from and how they came to be where they are). The romance is also sudden and ridiculous, like a 30 year old man suddenly falling for the young Spanish girl after a couple of small talk conversations.
His inheritance: a bachelor uncle leaves him a mansion and funds, but the way the protagonist throws around money to help his new in-laws in Spain recover their property and then some...was his uncle Bill Gates or Kanye West? because that's the kind of money he's spending, even considering inflation. No way he inherited so much money he went from unable to afford his own apartment to almost literally throwing money at people for any and every cause.

The character didn't develop logically, the mystery didn't unfold consistently (lots of slow moments then tumbling ahead quickly), nor was it particularly inventive or intriguing. Too bad. Seemed like it could have been a hidden gem.

The Old Gray Homestead doesn't have the extensive notes on F.P. Keyes's creative process and on-site research that I have come to expect from her books. It's her first book (1919) -- very well written, set in Vermont, drawing upon her life experience of 30-some years, 15 in rural New England. It reminds me of something by Gene Stratton Porter -- a poor farm boy / rich girl romance similar to Laddie, A True Blue Story but thankfully lacking the self-conscious whimsy of the latter; Austin calls his lady by her name, Laddie refers to "the Princess" until ... well. Far too often. Perhaps it's more like something by L. M. Montgomery. Keyes's characters would be at home and welcomed in Avonlea. My personal favourite minor character is a gossipy old lady by the name of Mrs Elliott, who sometimes had me laughing out loud. Here she is on the phone: '"Yes, this is Mrs Elliot -- Maybe if some of the folks on the line that's taken their receivers down so's they can know who I'm talkin' to an' what I'm sayin' will hang up, you can hear me a little more plain." (This timely remark resulted in several little clicks.)'

""Joy Street- once popular vintage fiction, though not exactly a classic- is an epic tale of one woman’s struggle to find love while overcoming the stereotypical role and stigma of the Bostonian wealthy social elite. Keyes’ story takes place during the period from 1937 to 1946.

As the story begins, Emily Thayer sees nothing wrong with living in her elitist bubble. She is the favorite grand-daughter of Mrs. Forbes who’s deceased husband was an Ambassador for the U.S. Government, and her uncle is a U.S. Senator. Mrs. Forbes owns about 5 estate properties including a lavish farm in the country. As each of her 6 children married, they were gifted a house along with an exquisite trousseau adorned with priceless furniture, art, china, and silver. Emily expects no less when she marries.

Her inner conflict begins when she becomes the wife of a man of decent social standing, but not quite smart enough, rich enough, or sufficiently clever to fit in with the elitists. Too proud to live off Emily’s trust fund, he is forced to take a job as a junior attorney in a second-rate law firm that also employs lawyers of Irish, Italian, and Jewish descent. Were you aware in the 1930s these nationalities were shunned by the elitists? Emily and her husband Roger decide they will break down the social barriers… or at least genuinely befriend Roger’s work associates and invite them to private social gatherings.

The wonderful thing about reading old fiction like "Joy Street" is the authenticity; the morals, social standards, etiquette, fashion, descriptions of décor, dialogue and colloquial language of the time. Frances Parkinson Keyes began producing fiction in 1919 and continued with her career until 1972. She authored over 50 books including memoirs, biographies, novels and inspirational writing. Joy Street was completed mid-way through her career. In 1950 it ranked second place as best-selling novel in the United States selling over 2 million copies. Keyes is a great story teller… but be prepared. You may find the politically incorrect references to the “socially undesirable” nationalities offensive. Keyes fictional work is not officially banned today, though most libraries have removed her books from the shelves. Perhaps it is just due to lack of interest in the outdated themes and long-winded descriptive writing style.

A reviewer on Amazon complained bitterly about the racism in this book. It's true, the black characters are depicted (through the eyes of the white characters) as Amos-n-Andy types. They just barely stop short of calling them "darkies". But to do them justice, the white characters are pretty stupid and obtuse in their relationships with each other too. The book is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Legend-making is typical of people thirsting for change, and accompanies a "hunger for resounding utterances" however counterfeit the oration. According to Daniel Boorstin, "many of the most influential, longest remembered, and most popularly memorized of these actually were not delivered at all on their supposed occasions." [58]

One of the 2016 Read Harder challenges is to read a book from the decade of your birth. For me, that would be the 1940s as I was born in the first half of the last century. Frances Parkinson Keyes' novel Dinner at Antoines hit number 3 on the 1948 Best Sellers list as determined by Publishers Weekly, and was number 6 on the same list for 1949. This seemed like a good book to read for the challenge.

My first observation is that readers had a much longer attention span sixty plus years ago. I dare say you'd be hard pressed to find a 366 page murder mystery written recently, and that's 366 pages of relatively small print. As engaging as the story is, this is not an overnight read. I would note that Dan Brown's long novels, e.g. The DaVinci Code, are not really murder mysteries so much as they are adventure/intrigue stories, which is a completely different category. My next observation is that language changes over time, even over the relatively short period of the sixty-seven years of this book's life. What, for example, is an "English Basement," a term Keyes uses to describe the entrance to a New York City restaurant? (I hasten to note that various dictionaries are able to define the term, and indeed it apparently is still in use on the East Coast for what, in my part of the country is called a Garden Apartment.) Still, today's reader may find the language here a bit stilted, and the conversations even more so. The speech of the black nanny (and yes, there are characters in the book who refer to her as a Nigger), is so strongly written as to make Butterfly McQueen's famous line about "birthin'" babies sound positively Shakespearean. If any black person ever spoke the way Tossie Pride speaks, it must be because she thought that that's what white folk expected. At least that's my perspective from 2016.

Make no mistake, this is a novel set among the upper class. Even the "poorest" white folk in the novel have servants, and engaging a private room at a fancy restaurant for a dinner party of 8 or 10 is to be expected, not extraordinary. Three such meals take place in the eight days covered in the story.

Antoine's is a real New Orleans restaurant, open since 1840 which makes it, according to some sources, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States. The restaurant created the dish Oysters Rockefeller, and many of the dishes mentioned in the novel are on the 2016 menu, so as in all things New Orleans, tradition plays an important part--and it certainly does in the story as well.

Keyes (whose name rhymes with Prize or Skies), was born in Virginia, was educated all around Europe, grew up tri-lingual, and at age 18 married a future U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. She knew intimately the kind of life she describes in her novel, and after her husband's death in 1938, she traveled extensively, eventually ending up in New Orleans where she bought and refurbished a mansion on Chartres St. in the French Quarter. She converted to Catholicism, and indeed, most of the characters in this novel are members of the Roman Catholic church. She believed that women should approach the marriage altar as virgins, and that moral code plays a heavy role throughout the novel--another distinguishing feature from many modern tales. And yes, I know that people had sex outside of marriage in 1948 and even before, but that's not what a proper lady would do in a FPKeyes novel.

This is a murder mystery, and Keyes' Catholic faith even plays into that scenario. The question upon finding the corpse is not so much who killed the victim as it is whether the deed was murder or suicide. If the latter, it is very clear that the church will have no part in the victim's funeral, nor will the victim be buried on consecrated ground. And if it is murder, there are plenty of potential suspects to pick from, all of whom had opportunity and most of whom had obvious motives. So which was it, and if murder, who pulled the trigger? That's the question that Keyes takes over three hundred pages to answer.

In a satisfying (to this reader) literary convention, the book ends with an "Envoi," eight sections following the twenty-three chapters, giving us a follow up on the main characters of the novel and what has happened in their lives in the year after the events of January 1948, the month in which all twenty-three chapters are set.

Reading this bit of literary history, I got caught up in the story. I've read a great many murder mysteries set in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities. This one stands out because of the great amount of detail Keyes uses to describe the minutiae of upper class New Orleans life. I look forward to reading more of Keyes books (over 50 published between 1919 and her death in 1970), and I heartily recommend this, her most popular work, to anyone interested in period literature, New Orleans high society, or just plain fun.

Francis Parkinson Keyes is an author whose books I used to read many years ago. I felt like reading something by her so I picked this up. Dinner at Antoine's takes place in New Orleans and the uniqueness of that city is truly felt in this book. The majority of the book takes place in in 8 days at the beginning of January 1948 and the wrap up chapters extend the time out to October 1948. The characters, all introduced in the beginning at a private dinner at Antoine's, an exclusive restaurant are immediately struck with tragedy within 24 hours of the dinner. One of their number is dead. Was it suicide? Murder? The book is extraordinarily long and while I enjoyed it, I do feel it could have benefited from a bit of editing.

Love, murder, & long held family secrets in the rice country bayous of Louisiana. Very well done, & a really good story :) I really liked the fact that the author, in doing the dialogue, stayed true to the native patois & way of speaking for the time as well

Finally gave up on this one. Just could not get into it.

series of stories based on the famous Antoine's of New Orleans and life in 1940s New Orleans. humorous yet revealing of local customs.

There is a wonderful sense of life in the old upper-class New Orleans families of the 1940's . Mardi Gras is very interesting. The mystery works (what there is of it) but the book is mostly a soap opera. The romance in the book did not work for me. Keyes was born in 1885 and she married in 1903. Her husband was 40 years old and a prominent politician who served as a governor and a US senator. Her attitude about love and marriage seems to reflect her own life. All the good women seem to strive to be a handmaiden to a good man with important work to do. I like seeing characters play the hand that life has dealt them including the women's social restrictions of the era they lived in. But the women in this book aren't playing their hands, they're just sitting there holding their cards prettily . As incredibly racist as this book is the black woman is actually the best developed female character. The devoted domestic servant is a mainstay in novels. Tossie's devotion actually makes sense. She has found a niche in life that suits her and she is not as humble as she seems. She has found plenty of people to look down on (black-and-white). It is way too long.

A late work by the industrious pop-novelist, journalist, and chronicler of Roman Catholic tradition. An homage to a then-famous New Orleans restaurant and ite manager, it's a mystery of the sort which would probably called "a cozy" if written today. Pretty thin; stuff, to my taste; I read it in mercifully temporary default of anything else to read.

An autobiographical fragment which touches lightly upon this author's writing life. Several anecdotes how she goes about writing her novels ,about book signings and about her life in general. Largely unread today I would have thought but this little unassuming volume does have a certain charm.½

Oh, I did love this book. Even the forward by Miss Keyes made me fall in love with France. A young American woman whose heart was broken makes her way into the Red Cross during WWI. She meets a Frenchman of a very good family, and life brightens considerably. Skip forward to the beginning of WWII and see what changes are brought about by the arrival of the German Army and the loss of family and friends.

Great story about Paul Morphy

1st English ed. Signed!

1266. Therese Saint of a Little Way, by Frances Parkinson Keyes (21 Mar 1974) This slight biography I felt over-laudatory, even though I have great respect for its subject, but parts of the book were still enjoyable. A far better biography was one I read in Jan 1967: The Making of a Modern Saint: A Biographical Study of Therese of Lisieux, by Barry Ulanov. It was more objective. But this book had its moments.½

This was my introduction to romantic novels - junior high and a well worn library copy. I have no idea how it stands up to time since I'm not about to mess with those good memories. There's no telling how many times my best friend and I re-read this book - guess I'll never forget Constance and Tristan's story.

3/4/22

$33. Good condition, one blotch on spine.