WHITE PALACE

I saw the movie first and it was inspirational to me as someone who had better relationships with older women than my peers.

I loved this book right up til the end. I knew better than to expect the Hollywood ending. But Max really didn't change that much. He fought and suffered to get back to where he was at the start: working in advertising. Yes he suffered in poverty among the very poorest people in the city while he lived in NYC, but that came off as a circumstance of bad finances in the pursuit of Nora and burning his bridges in the industry. Although he loved his ordered life at the beginning of the book, he wasn't nearly as materialistic as his friends and having grown up poor he adapted to what he had to do with the same rigid discipline he's always had.
Nora's transformation was much better than Max's. Although Nora had her qualms about her new boyfriend, George comes across as very sympathetic and I have to wonder if she's going to end up cheating on him with Max. Such an event strikes me as disrespectful to their characters.
I think a much better ending would had been both of them realizing that the relationship has run it's course. But not for the reasons they had feared at the beginning. Nora finally seemed healed of her wounds and was being the best version of herself she could be. Her new life just didn't include Max any more because their relationship dynamic was based on how she used to be and the need she had for Max as a stabilizing influence.
And Max should realize the conflicts he always had with Nora, which was his source of attraction to her, was unhealthy for him and based on needing to take care of his mother. Max was very physically attracted to Nora, but it was always phrased as praise of the physical aspects of her that he found unpleasant or repulsive. He was wanting to break out of his old life and she was the exact opposite of what he had always been told to desire. But once he breaks out of his old life, he should grow past that framework. Nora was the journey for him, not the destination. As should had been the case for her as well.