Rules of Civility

A poor but plucky heroine with wit, ambition and a carefully hidden heart of gold makes her way through New York society in 1937-38. This is a fairy tale, where Kate Kontent impresses influential people with her hard work, grasp of grammar and love of literature and makes socially advantageous friends because of her integrity and kindness. She endures romantic disappointment and dramatic revelations with fortitude and imagination, and, in general, her friends and lovers do too. I enjoyed reading this–in fact, I stayed up too late one night to finish it–but I did think that everyone had a little too much civility for some of the events of the story. In her anger, Kate allows herself to be rude to the man who deceives her, but then she repents and actually goes to apologize. But what do I expect of a fairy tale heroine? She has to be virtuous enough to deserve the happy ending that inevitably comes.