Mysterious, ambiguous, sensational, ridiculous

[sovay]

The fantasy-prone heroine of Elmer Rice's Dream Girl (1945) is an aspiring novelist and not very successful proprietor of a small bookshop which is lately out of copies of the best-selling bodice-ripper Always Opal, an obvious riff on Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber: "I was appreciating Opal's hot affair with Monseigneur de Montrouget and you interrupted me just as they were about to—" Alternatives proposed to a disappointed customer do not meet with success. The new Russian novel The Dniepier Goes Rolling Along is equally kidding Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don/The Don Flows Home to the Sea, but I have no idea what My Heart Is Like a Trumpet is riffing on. "Mary Myrtle Miven's latest . . . a sort of idyllic love story about two horses. Very tender and poetic." I feel I should be able to detect the joke from the available information, but I got nothing. When the love interest entered the scene with an armload of unwanted ARCs, I was faintly surprised I had never encountered a copy of Fun with a Chafing Dish at a library sale myself.

Comments

[vr_trakowski]

Grace Livingston Hill is a long shot - but she wrote romances (mostly Christian-flavored), including The Sound of the Trumpet, published in 1943. Unfortunately it's not one I've read, so I don't know if it includes any horses.

Her Wikipedia page doesn't have a complete list of titles, but the fan site has quite a few.

[sovay]

Grace Livingston Hill is a long shot

I have definitely never heard of her! I love the writers this conversation is bringing out of the woodwork.

I like the sound of By Way of the Silverthorns (1941), even though I am sure I would have been allergic to the spirituality. I barely manage Elizabeth Goudge.

[vr_trakowski]

Yes, I wouldn't necessarily recommend her stuff - some of it is quite thoughtful and some of it is appalling - but I do enjoy several of them.

There's a few that are non-spiritual, like The Best Man or Aunt Crete's Emancipation, but they're all very much of their time (period-typical sexism and racism). Though it is fun sometimes to read about an era when small planes were unrestricted and one could take a train almost anywhere.

It's such an interesting puzzle you've found and I hope someday you can find a pointer to the actual book! There must be a bit of trivia hidden somewhere...