ELLA PRICE'S JOURNAL

by Dorothy Bryant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 1972

Ella Price is 34, prim but latently promising, and she lives in a small-minded California town doing part-time clerical work or coming home to Lulu, their self-sufficient teenager, and Joe, her husband. He likes two martinis before dinner and television, or a Doris Day movie. Then Ella enrolls in a Junior College in an English course with Dan Harkins who makes her keep this journal to help limber her up. Ella is the kind of young woman who probably could have gone through her whole life very well -- all depending on what you mean by well -- on the principle that what you don't know won't hurt you. But before long she has read Mme. Bovary and The Golden Notebook and Camus has taught her that ""Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined"" while Shaw has amplified it -- ""You have learned something, and that always feels at first as if you had lost something,"" and Dan has helped to make her realize that she's capable of a kind of sexuality she's avoided for years, and poor Joe, easygoing Joe, he's probably better off than Ella who is going to start all over again, alone. . . . Her journal with its appropriately questioning innocence is very nicely handled and it easily gets across all those liberated, liberating ideas which usually come via prom queens or mad housewives. Ella's the kind of girl who might be living next door to you. Don't overlook her -- she appeals unquestionably and unconditionally.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION