You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO request is from Chamekke, who is looking for an Old Skool title:
I read this book as a pre-teen, back in *gulp* 1971 or thereabouts. I think it might have been intended as a Young Adult novel, and the author’s surname was probably somewhere around the middle of the alphabet, since I remember the Fiction wall and it was roughly midway through… but these are misty impressions and should not be relied upon too much.
Anyway, the novel was about a young, Ivy League-educated (?) woman who was from a well-to-do family, possibly even an heiress, but – for some reason I can’t remember – she wanted to get away from all that. So she adopted a new persona and became a waitress at a diner, complete with new accent and (if I remember correctly) gum-cracking ‘tude. She may or may not have blonded her hair and whipped it up into a beehive or similar; if that isn’t exactly what happened literally, it certainly captures the nature of her transformation. She REALLY wanted to become a different person, which included concealing her education and possibly her intellect as well.
There were 2 men who came into the diner – and, of course, her life: the Rake (your basic handsome devil, Sensibility’s candidate) and the Beta (a very nice guy, recommended strongly by Sense). I’m pretty sure there was some a-grappling with the Rake, although as an 11-year-old reader I was far more interested in the question of changing your identity and (mostly) getting away with it.
In retrospect, I recall the novel as being a mischievous detournement of the romance genre, but of course those were Old Skool days and it’s unlikely I could have spelled ‘detournement’ at the time, so take that too with a big pinch of salt.
I’m all about a heroine with a “gum-cracking ‘tude.” Can we help Chamekke out?
You know, that actually sounds kind of cool. I hope someone knows it.
Lol, I’m intrigued too!
Could it be Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis Mcgraw?
Greensleeves sounds likely and the timing is right – published in ’68. I’ve been meaning to read it.
I’m pretty sure it’s not “Greensleeves” because the heroine in that works for her lawyer uncle tracking down people in some weird old lady’s will, but this novel sounds familiar.
The heroine works for her uncle – but disguises herself and takes a job as a waitress while investigating.
I agree that this sounds like Greensleeves. The heroine had famous divorced parents – a beautiful actress mother and a world roving journalist father. One parent was British and the other American, and she had spent her growing up years going back and forth between the two. She felt torn between them, but also felt she truly belonged in neither world. Hence her escape into a bee-hived, blue-eye shadowed, gum chewing American waitress persona. She does end up also doing investigative work for her uncle on a peculiar will, and that is how she meets the Rake – a somewhat anti-social botanical artist, and the Beta – an aspiring writer, and other interesting characters. The heroine is just between high school and college, and it is a book about starting to define oneself rather than doing what is expected by family. Maybe not quite a traditional romance – the romantic HEA is implied, not explicit, but a very fun, sweet book, and well-written, IMHO.
I remember Greensleeves very well — the beehive hairdo and heavy eye makeup stuck in my memory — but it had something to do with unusual bequests in a will, and I remember the young woman as multi-lingual more than well-educated.
It does sound like Greensleeves – which wasn’t a romance though, it was more of a coming of age story with romantic elements. It’s one of those books that stayed with me for many years. It and probably TREGARON’S DAUGHTER by Madeleine Brent made a big impression on my early teen self. And it’s finally available as an affordable ebook on amazon. I just bought it and happily so. For years I had been looking for this book and only finding outrageously prized out of print hardcovers.
THAT’S IT! It’s Greensleeves! Now you’ve named the title, I remember seeing it on the cover. Can’t believe I forgot that part, it was so evocative.
Thank you everyone, especially Shana for precisely identifying the book and author, and Leslie for the beautiful summary. Over the years the subplot with the parents completely fell out of my brain, not to mention a good many of the other specifics – blame my fading memories of pre-adolescence – but the beehive hairdo and gum-cracking clearly made a huge impression, as did the Rake and Beta.
I’m so delighted! Now I can go read it once more. Thanks everybody!! *dances about*
This seems really familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything published in 1971, but I have read a lot of reprints, so it is possible. I remember reading something about 14 years ago in which a young woman end up completely changing her appearance as well as her name and working in a diner. The only thing I remember about it is that she either had red hair or dyed her hair red and was thinking about how she hadn’t been able to wear pink blouses with red hair. I did have a feeling that this was a re-print, but there weren’t any cultural touchstones to tell me when this took place, so I can’t tell you if this is at all the same book. I also, unfortunately, can’t remember the title or the author. It was a fairly thin book and I think the cover might have been blue.
Yay! So glad it’s been identified….now I have to track it down. 🙂
If you’d like to read a non-fiction version, minus the romance but with all the angst, there’s Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist who took a series of minimum-wage jobs an reported on the difficulties of trying to get by on the money she earned.
@Kilian:
I read that book – I think I read it twice. Every time I drive by a motel I think about the stories from that book. It’s powerful reading.