The Jewel Box by Anna Davis
Yes, I finally finished a book! After reading her The Shoe Queen I knew, sort of, what to expect. I liked her style in The Shoe Queen, and I liked the world where the events took place. Where The Shoe Queen was set in the bohemian Paris of the 20’s, The Jewel Box took across the canal to the roaming London in the third decade of the 20th century.
Davis paints a picture of London in the 20’s to us with a vivid brush. The flapper world is present in this even more than it was in the previous book. The one problem I had with The Shoe Queen, the almost too elaborate details of the outfits, were corrected for this book. The story was painted for the reader but the details were not revelled in too much. The picture was complete, or maybe my knowledge of the era was more developed, but more trusting to the reader to see for themselves.
The story’s that of Grace, the original flapper, who is fighting for the rights of the women in her own way, while never really feeling up to task with her suffragette mother still at home, actively supporting the cause. Beautiful, fascinating and bold, Grace goes about town, dancing, drinking and dashing, only to write about the flapper life in her column at the Herald under the pen name Diamond Sharp.
The story of Grace takes place in pairs. Just like there’s two earrings in a jewel box, you need two people to dance the Charleston, and it takes two to a love affair. While we’re following Grace, we’re also introduced to her sister, Nancy. Equal in beauty, but nice to Grace’s naughty. There are two men, John and O’Connell, who both capture the attention, and attraction, of Grace. There are two stories, one taking place in the 1927, one for the years preceding that. Through these twosomes Davis spins before us a story about love, honesty, strength and gin. Especially gin.
But like in a jewel box, there’s always the mismatched. The earring whose pair is missing, the broken necklace or the brooch with a clasp that no longer works. These odd things show up for Grace as well, and to all those in her life, creating unbalance, breaking the symmetry. It is how the characters react to those asymmetries that keep us reading on, page after page.
Unfortunately, Davis chickens out at the end. The symmetry is restored, the broken pin tossed away. Only pairs are allowed in this jewel box.
Shame. It’s usually the mismatched that keep things interesting.
