The Town in Bloom

Beautiful, intricate and dazzling, this book has its pros and cons but overall it's a very worthwhile classic to dive into.

After completing the trinity of Dodie Smith's novels for adults, I've remembered why I appreciate her so much.Similar to I Capture the Castle, The Town in Bloom offers readers a presentation of unapologetic feminism and liberation that so many of Smith's counterparts lacked. Dodie Smith was, in fact, a rather brazen writer for her time and while I do not know what British culture was like in the first half of the 20th century, I do know that in the states, we were just beginning to push the boun [...]

It's pretty easy to assume Dodie Smith's The Town in Bloom is autobiographical. It's not; Smith pored through her exhaustive diaries to produce four volumes of autobiography about her literary pursuits, her life in the theater, and her brief stint in Hollywood. But somehow everything in this novel about the maturation of a teen girl among the fast theatrical set of London in the nineteen-twenties feels autobiographical. Every richly-detailed chapter evokes a lost era of glamorous chorines and a [...]

This book I don't know exactly what I think. It marks the fourth and last of the easily-accessible Dodie Smiths that I've read; if I want to read another one, I'll have to fork out ridiculous amounts of money for the discontinued "A Tale of Two Families" or "Girl in the Candlelit Bath", which I probably won't do, so this probably puts an end to my recent obsessive Dodie Smith reading. Was it a good end? I think so. Definitely entertaining; I couldn't put it down until somewhere around 2AM last n [...]

I have now read I Capture the Castle, The New Moon in with the Old, It Ends With Revelations, A Tale of Two Families, and this book I read them in that order, and that also happens to be the order of how I liked them. Despite being my least favorite of Dodie Smith's novels, this book stuck with me and I found myself stealing away to read it whenever I had a chance throughout the day. I feel like I'm getting pickier and pickier about books as I get older, so that's still saying something! I've h [...]

While I Capture the Castle is undeniably Dodie Smith's best work (and also, to my surprise, her first novel), I always find her works delightful. Dodie Smith writes the way my mind works. That's not to say that our writing style is the same - I'm not sure I'd be able to match her characters' signature wry humor and hearty skepticism - but there's something particularly compelling about the way she puts words together. It feels like she's reaching into my head, tugging out my thought processes, a [...]

Dodie Smith fornisce sempre letture soddisfacenti, anche se questa volta devo ammettere che non mi sono proprio innamorata. Ho trovato l'inizio del romanzo un po' caotico: tre amiche si riuniscono al solito tavolo, cosa che fanno ormai da quarantanni ogni cinque anni. E come in tutte le precedenti occasioni, sperano di essere raggiunte anche da Zelle, che un giorno ha svuotato la sua camera al Club e si è dispersa nel mondo (e ne aveva ben donde, a dire il vero!). Poi Mouse,la voce narrante del [...]

3 1/2 starsThis is the story of 18-year-old Mouse (we are never told her real name), who arrives in London in the 1920s to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. She rents a cubicle in a Ladies Club where she meets Lilly and Molly, two fellow actresses trying to make it in the theatre world as well. A bit later, a young rich socialite named Zelle joins the trio.Fearless as she is, Mouse manages to get a job on her first day in London - not as an actress, but at least as a secretary at the famo [...]

I love this author!

I read this a decade ago, and didn't really grasp it and thus barely remembered it, so I thought I would try it again. This time around I see what the book is doing.Other reviews do an excellent job summarising the structure (a day in the 1960s, with the bulk of the book a flashback to the 1920s) and the plot. What interested me about the book is the thematic concerns, the meditation upon chastity as a cultural value, especially for women. Each of the characters casts light from a different angl [...]

The main reason why I loved Mary McCarthy’s The Group was the fact that it was so true to life. In some ways, Dodie Smith’s story is just like it. Smith does not describe a flowery tale of London theatre lifeeverything all buttons and bows. She is really honest and at times her honesty is quite brutal. Her story is not just about theatre life, but life in generalyoung girls exposed to life’s realities. What I really found interesting was that some of the things Smith is describing are stil [...]

"The Town in Bloom" is one of those books, that one should read for the sake of the characters and not the plot itself. Smith's youthful trio consisting of the extremely stubborn, fun and clumsy Mouse, the beautiful and elegant Lily and the practical and naive Molly, fills the book with charm. Especially the main character Mouse is an adorable creature, and her many failed (yet determined) attempts at acting are beyond amusing.The plot itself is fairly predictable. Young and love-lusting girls g [...]

I adore Dodie Smith, but besides her I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmations, I would never dare recommend her to another soul. She is (as one of my dear fictional friends Ann-with-an-e would say) a bosom friend or a kindred spirit. Reading Dodie is like coming home. As I started this one, I thought to myself, if I were a fictional character, I would be in a Dodie Smith novel. Her characters are perfectly ordinary but so full of life. They're real in ways that Donna Tartt (even with her hundreds [...]

This book is a very distant spiritual relation to I Capture the Castle. The central story is sweet, in its own way; a young girl who leaves home and finds work in a theater, finds her first great love, her lifelong best friends, and basically builds the pattern for her life to come.It's bookended a luncheon, thirty years on, at which she meets up with these great friends every five years. It's the bookend that bothers me. The central story is a lot of fun, if slight - no one is quite real. No on [...]

The Town in Bloom offers a fascinating glimpse into lives of three young women who decide to pursue the London stage in the 1920s. They live in a boarding house and go on continual audiitions. When they're not working, they're busy gossiping, having fun, and falling in love. This book wonderfully captures the blissful feeling of being young and free. I'm sure a great deal of this story draws upon the author's own experiences as a young actress. One thing that I find so refreshing about her chara [...]

Included this in a speed-dating project and decided to pass it along elsewhere.

Another incredible offering from Dodie Smith. You can watch my full review here - youtu/baCrpAQRBYg

We first meet Mouse as she and her friends are meeting for drinks at a reunion, hoping that their friend Zelle will join them, and then flash back in time to her arrival in London in the 1920s as an aspiring actress. She meets Lillian and Molly at the women’s club where she resides. While she fails to get an acting position initially, she does land a job as a secretary at a theater. The manager, also a prime actor, is someone Mouse admires and she gains Rex’s trust over time, getting opportu [...]

Generally adored this and feel like talking about the bits that I didn't are a bit spoilery, so. It's not the classic that Castle is, but still quite charming and entertaining and just made me feel happy. Pretty much the epitome of comfort reading for me.

Quaint. Charming. Winning story of a young woman in bloom, with a truly satisfying ending. Loved it!

what a load of nonsense really. didn't feel like wasting my time on it. dnf

It gets kind of boring. I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmations were her best (obviously).

Four stars and then it just seemed to go on for too long. Still, a good read but nothing close to I Capture the Castle. Recommended for fans of ICtC.

This at turns funny, but slightly heartbreaking, coming-of-age novel had me rooting for the heroine and her friends but in the end left me a little bit sad.

The book starts and ends on a single day in London in the 1960s, with a long flashback to a summer in the 1920s making up most of the story. Mouse, Molly and Lillian, now in their fifties and sixties, have a reunion lunch in a London restaurant. THey wait for the fourth member of their little group, Zelle, to show up, but in vain. Mouse later spots Zelle and follows her to her home and clears up the last mysteries of that summer in the 1920s when their fates were decided.The story then really st [...]

Under its breezy surface, this is quite a wise novel. The framing narrative sees 3 middle-aged ladies having lunch in a nice restaurant. However, their little reunion is marred by the absence of a fourth friend who, over the years, has refused all invitations. When Mouse spots an old crone on a park bench opposite their window, it occurs to her that this might be their missing friend in disguise, and she gives chase. Thereafter starts Mouse's account of a summer long ago when she first came to L [...]

Dodie Smith never fails to entertain, and this book is no exception, but it's definitely the least impressive of all her novels. I am not sure why the book jacket describes it better than I Capture the Castle, as it most certainly is not. For theatre buffs, it might have more to offer, as its the story of a young woman who moves to London in the 1920s to pursue her dreams of acting, ending up in a club hotel for actors and befriending Molly, Zelle, and Lillian, who are also involved in the theat [...]

“The Town In Bloom” (1965): This novel followed “The New Moon With The Old” in Dodie Smith’s novels. I’d like to give it 3.5 stars instead of 4. It was less wonderful than its predecessor and miles away from “I Capture The Castle.” The main character is “Mouse,” a small, funny, self-assured young woman who goes to London to become a stage actress. With great luck she is taken into friendship at the The Club (a sort of boarding house/hotel for women connected to the theatre) w [...]

After having loved Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle", I wondered if a later novel could be as good. I needn't have worried, it is almost in the same class. Written in 1965, we visit London theatre land in the nineteen twenties as eighteen year old Mouse lands her first job at the Crossway Theatre. Her adventures are so well and wittily described, this is a real feelgood story. Not everything is sweetness and light, an undercurrent of doomed relationships pervade the book. But Mouse is lucky w [...]

This book was good but, it made me sad. It reminded me a little bit of I Capture The Castle, but for an older audience. Both books don't have happy endings, and Smith leaves some strings untied. Although I did like this book, the characters frustrated me. The main character is the narrator and her nickname is Mouse, her real name is never given. The story covers the summer she spent working as a secretary for a theater as she was an aspiring actress. The other main characters are her three frien [...]