Her Infinite Variety

From Publishers Weekly
Over the course of his long career, Auchincloss (The Education of Oscar Fairfax, etc.) has always excelled in portraying women of the upper class. In the past, his female characters were often anachronistic members of a society whose strict rules of conduct and social acceptance were ceasing to matter. Here he transcends himself with an astute and witty novel about a woman who disdains the old values of money and class in favor of a feminine meritocracy in the world of business. As becomes abundantly clear in her brilliant rise to power, however, Clara Longcope Hoyt Tyler is skilled at using her beauty to open doors and secure advancement. The bright, strong-willed, refreshingly spirited daughter of a Yale professor and a domineering, socially obsessed mother, Vassar undergrad Clara almost makes a disastrous marriage to a man whose career would limit her opportunities. Practicality wins out; instead, she marries wealthy, complacent Trevor Hoyt, whose New York banking family soon stifles her career plans. Caught in an affair while Trevor is in Europe during WWII (and indulging in his own extramarital liaisons), Clara spurns his forgiveness, his money and his social position to strike out on her own. As an editor on a chic fashion magazine, she becomes adept at playing a man's game of ruthless opportunism and frank ambition while employing her beauty to snare the devotion of media mogul Eric Tyler, who eventually installs her as vice-president of Tyler Publications. When their marriage and her micromanaging incur the animosity of Tyler's son and heir, cynical and increasingly belligerent Clara involves the family in a power struggle, from which she emerges victorious. Auchincloss's attitude toward his heroine is interesting. Initially, he seems empathetic, demonstrating that during the 1940s and '50s, smart, determined yet idealistic women like Clara were forced to use feminine wiles to fulfill their potential. But after Clara asks herself again and again if she is a monster, acknowledging her cold heart and inability to love (she treats even her daughter with cool distance), one senses that the author has come to dislike his creation and to despise her moral failings. In any case, his unsparing portrait of an ambitious woman has vitality and credibility, and it voices truths with elegant precision. Agent, Andrew Pope. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Well, I don't know about variety. Clara Hoyt seems like a pretty typical young, striving aristocratic woman earlier in this century, when the clear path to coldblooded success was to marry well. Clara's move after Vassar to her first marriage to a good society match is expected, but when World War II intervenes and her husband is posted abroad, she has an affair with (egad!) a left-leaning journalist. He dies in Europe, her marriage eventually gives way, and she moves on with a magazine career of her own. This allows her to break up the marriage of her boss and eventually inherit his fortune. Billed as a novel of manners, Auchincloss's 56th book is a two-dimensional view of New York society life that breezes quickly through a few decades but offers no real insight into the human experience. Not recommented.Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
One of Auchincloss’s great themes—the decline of the ruling–class WASP—here expands to include the female strivers of the pre-feminist age. Think of all this century’s grande dames, those smart and connected women from Pamela Harriman to Brooke Astor who refused to assume a matronly role for their well-off hubbies, and you have the real-life counterparts to Auchincloss’s heroine. This is not his first book to examine the ethics of well-bred women on the make (see The Lady of Situations, 1990). What’s new here is a surprising sexual frankness, conveying a familiar reminder that among the upper classes even adultery has its rules of behavior. Violet Longcope, the frustrated wife of a Yale professor, hopes for greater things for her daughter, Clara, a blond and beautiful Vassar grad. Pushed by her mother, herself deluded by visions of “the great world” beyond New Haven, Clara marries into the fabulously wealthy Hoyt family, ruled by her mother-in-law, who cautiously approves Clara’s desire to have a career of her own. A success at a major style magazine, Clara pauses briefly in her ascent to bear a child. While her husband fights in WWII, she gets involved stateside with a Kennedyesque politician. After her lover dies at Normandy and her husband learns of the affair, Clara gets a divorce and devotes herself full-time to her career. She plots her editorial takeover of the magazine, eventually marries the elderly tycoon who owns it, and after his death runs his foundation with the same savvy she’s displayed throughout. Auchincloss works in his familiarity with trusts and estates once again when Clara’s greedy stepson challenges her inheritance. Always the smooth operator, liberal-minded Clara survives an ill-fated affair with an oily art-dealer and eventually triumphs with an ambassadorship from JFK himself.Another fine chapter in Auchincloss’s ongoing fictional chronicle of the American century. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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This is a modern book with old-fashioned virtues: a compelling plot, vivid characters, and marvelous scenery, all described in Auchincloss's rich and precise prose. He is a master! — (Susan Cheever)


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