Saturday 13 October 2012

The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker

Title: The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker

Author: Charles Webb

Year of publication: 1970, Penguin edition 1972

Back cover blurb: 'The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker is much like other young American marriages.  After eighteen months of it, Lisa leaves Bill during their summer holiday by the sea.  Not that both parties wouldn't like to make their marriage work according to the ideal American formula.  But what is that formula?  If they could only discover why they got together in the first place, they might make a start, though Lisa's sister, Nan, would be determined to foil them...'

Quick flick reveals: I'm not a fan of Webb's The Graduate.  To me it reads like the treatment for a film, which is perhaps why the film based on it is so good.  Having said that, I am more than happy to give this a go because it has Richard Benjamin's face on the cover, and I like looking at Richard Benjamin's face.  Depressingly, in the author biog, written five years after The Graduate movie was a hit, can be found the line 'he is employed as a stockroom help at a department store in California.'  What has a writer got to do to actually make some money round here?

Random paragraphs: '"Would you say I'm not fun to be with?  Would that express it?"
   Lisa nodded.  "That's as close as I could come to expressing it."  She walked past him and into the kitchen.'


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