• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: Betty Crocker

Love, Theft, Hate: The Sisters of Summit Avenue

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1930s, Betty Crocker, book review, character-driven narrative, emotional theft, false redemption, historical fiction, Lynn Cullen, Midwest, no and furthermore, sibling rivalry, superb characterization

Review: The Sisters of Summit Avenue, by Lynn Cullen
Gallery, 2019. 312 pp. $27

Coming of age in 1920s Indiana with barely a penny to their names and kindly but incompetent parents, sisters June and Ruth are fiercely attached but deadly competitive. Elder June, the popular girl, the beauty, the one with artistic talent, wants to escape their drab existence, to make something of herself. Bookish Ruth, deemed less capable, less everything, wants the attention she believes she’s never received. Accordingly, throughout their lives together, whatever June gets, Ruth wants. Shortly before Ruth’s eighteenth birthday, she settles on June’s fiancé, John, as her next goal.

But though Ruth marries John and settles down on his family farm, by 1934, she’s up against it. A heretofore rare form of encephalitis that has swept the country in the 1930s has left John mostly comatose. Their farm is failing, Ruth struggles to raise four kids, and her mother, who lives with them, is too lost in dreams of a past that never existed to have much to offer.

Marjorie Husted, the actress who portrayed Betty Crocker on the radio, ca. 1944 (courtesy National Archives and Records Administration, “Fight Food Waste in the Home,” Office for Emergency Management, Office of War Information; via Wikimedia Commons)

Meanwhile, June has married a successful doctor, a cheerful, controlling narcissist, Richard Whiteleather (now, there’s a name) and lives in a mansion in St. Paul, Minnesota. June has jewels, fashionable dresses, and a country-club membership, but she remains insecure about her origins, and she’s childless, which breaks her heart. She has a job with the flour company, answering the tons of letters lonely, frustrated, harried women write to Betty Crocker — an advertising logo, not a real person — and working up the recipes and pamphlets distributed in her name. You can guess what Ruth thinks of her sister’s job:

In between giving out recipes, Betty tipped off her followers on how to win a husband and keep him, not only by taking the proverbial shortcut through his stomach, but by keeping themselves attractive and interesting. Betty, with her on-air interviews with bachelors about what they looked for in a wife and her ten-cent booklets full of man-pleasing recipes, implied that men were like dumb beasts running free on the plains, unaware that they were being stalked, until, bang! they were shot down by “Apricot Topsy-Turvy” or “Peeps and Squeals Sandwiches,” served by a perky huntress in an apron. She wondered how her sister could live with herself, contributing to this nonsense. Of course, Sister June had always been a big game hunter.

Not only does Ruth resent June for earning money through artifice, while she herself struggles to farm (presumably raising the wheat that makes the flour), she hates it all the more that June sends her every penny she earns. Ruth, who stole John from June, has to watch while crippling illness steals him back. June, who suffers from Richard’s self-centeredness, envies Ruth’s ability to have children by the man they both love, even though he’s now lost to the world.

The family dynamic reveals so much by itself, you understand their world, no explanation required. Combine weak parents, rivalry for attention, ambivalent attachment, and thwarted desires, and you see why, for example, either sister would want John, a kind person but a man incapable of asserting himself.

However, I wish Cullen didn’t tell feelings so often when they really matter; she’s more than capable of showing them. I also wish she’d built the novel more coherently, especially in the first third, when the narrative leaps back and forth from decade to decade in three different narrator’s heads. There’s a lot of back story to cover, and no doubt Cullen settled on this narrative form after trying others, but it takes a while for the central event to occur, a visit to Ruth’s farm by June and Richard, which leads to confrontations everyone has been avoiding forever.

Still, Cullen’s keen, subtle sense of human psychology wins the day, and you can see how family resentments and foolishly kept secrets have cascaded through the years. As a storyteller, she knows how to employ emotional “no — and furthermore,” in which internal narrative, triggered by mundane events, ratchets up the tension. This requires no manipulation or contrivance: It’s character-driven narrative at its best.

That is, until the end, which I find implausible. Partly, that’s because Cullen has done such a fine job pushing her characters into tight corners that redemption is no longer an option. I don’t want to give anything away, of course, but to take one minor example, consider that Richard, the egotistical doctor, might not be so pliable a character as that. Such people don’t change easily; and, further, there’s a wonderful scene in which June’s mother-in-law freely talks about her son’s unbounded greed for what he wants. Mother knows best, I think.

If you can love ninety percent of a novel and slap your head in consternation at the remaining ten percent, that’s how I feel about The Sisters of Summit Avenue. Read it for the terrific character studies; but I think the author, who has done brilliantly portraying messy lives, may have tried to tidy up too much.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • The Women Behind the Legend: Traces
  • Music, Death, Grief: The Great Passion
  • The Pain Will Get Better: After Lives
  • The Commission for Relief in Belgium
  • Sold!: The Shinnery

Recent Comments

Craig Baker on The Luckiest Man in Russia: A…
His Last Duchess: Th… on The Shakespeares, at Home:…
Year of the Thriller… on An Island of Women: Matri…
Year of the Thriller… on Royal Assassin: M, King’s…
Year of the Thriller… on Deception’s Toll: An Unlikely…

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Roxana Arama
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 175 other subscribers
Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • The Women Behind the Legend: Traces
  • Music, Death, Grief: The Great Passion
  • The Pain Will Get Better: After Lives
  • The Commission for Relief in Belgium
  • Sold!: The Shinnery

Recent Comments

Craig Baker on The Luckiest Man in Russia: A…
His Last Duchess: Th… on The Shakespeares, at Home:…
Year of the Thriller… on An Island of Women: Matri…
Year of the Thriller… on Royal Assassin: M, King’s…
Year of the Thriller… on Deception’s Toll: An Unlikely…

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Roxana Arama

storyteller from a foreign land

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, crime writing, crime fiction

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

  • Follow Following
    • Novelhistorian
    • Join 175 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Novelhistorian
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...