The Saturday Morning Post (No. 151)

 

Topper is a 1937 supernatural comedy movie staring Candence Bennett and Cary Grant. The story's premise is that a fellow is haunted by a fun loving couple who died in a car crash, the car in question being the one he bought. I wanted to read the novel the movie was based on.  However, I could not find that book on Gutenberg, so I picked up another of his books to read instead. But hey, while researching and writing this lede, I discovered that Topper is, in fact, available the public domain, just not on the Gutenberg Press site, so I ended up getting it after as well.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

Biltmore Oswald, The Diary of a Hapless Recruit by Thorne Smith  C+

This 1918 book recounts the humorous experiences of the title character as he joins the navy. It is told in diary form, each with some sort of mishap or observation about his shore training in the navy.

It is a very quick, light read, each entry is something of a short comedy skit or sketch. Nothing deep. Not a lot of details about the life, just a breezy account of a rather inept young man. It is witty enough, but does not quite have the magic of a P G Wodehouse story, perhaps because there are no supporting characters. It's just Biltmore and some nameless fellow recruits, along with a goat and a dog.

Nothing to write home about, not laugh out loud funny, but amusing enough.

Topper by Thorne Smith  DNF 21%

This is that story about a haunted car. Cosmos Topper, a 40 year old banker/broker living in the suburbs feels like his life is in a rut. Well, it is. And discontented about it, so he buys a car. It turns out the car he bought was well known about town. It was the car of a wild-living, hard-drinking married couple, George and Marion Kerby met their unfortunate end by hitting a tree. The car, however was repaired, and Mr Topper buys it. Unknown to him, it comes with the ghosts of the Kerby's, who, in this story are basically invisible people.

It probably made a better movie, especially with Cary Grant as Topper. As a book, well, it suffers from my big bugaboo when it comes to storytelling - remoteness. Cosmos Topper, as well as George and Marion are just characters in a story, with no actual connection to a believable life. Ghosts aside. And while Smith tells the story with wit and insights, I never stopped noticing him telling the story. I didn't hate it, but I realized that I as forcing myself to keep reading, and that's something I do only rarely. I decided that in this case, I didn't like anyone enough to keep reading. So I didn't. 

Still, you might like it; a screwball comedy in words, and illustrations. Thorne Smith is a well regarded writer of humorous stories. He's just not to my taste.

I'm DNFing a fair number of books these days, but I think that can be explained by the fact that I am looking far and wide for books to try. I've got a couple more iffy ones on the way.