“A timely and beautiful story of female friendship and strength.” –Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author of The Queen’s Fortune“Martin deftly and exquisitely captures this historical moment.” –Jillian Cantor, USA Today bestselling author of In Another TimeIn the glitz and glamor tradition of Beatriz Williams’s Tiny Little Thing and Fiona Davis’s The Chelsea Girls, Danielle Martin’s … and Fiona Davis’s The Chelsea Girls, Danielle Martin’s debut is “a love letter to…women” (Greer Macallister, The Magician’s Lie) that illustrates the courage of women and the strength of sisterhood.
Welcome to the Starlite. Let your true self shine.
1962. In the middle of Brooklyn Heights sits the Starlite: boutique dress shop by day, underground women’s club by night. Started by the shop’s proprietor after her marriage crumbled, Madeline’s social club soon becomes a safe haven for women from all walks of life looking for a respite from their troubled relationships and professional frustrations. These after-hour soirées soon bring two very different women into Madeline’s life–Elaine, a British ex-pat struggling to save her relationship, and Lisa, a young stewardess whose plans for the future are suddenly upended–irrevocably changing all three women’s lives in ways no one could have predicted.
But when Madeline’s ne’er-do-well ex-husband shows up again, the luster of Starlite quickly dampens. As the sisterhood rallies around Madeline, tension begins to eat at the club. When an unspeakable tragedy befalls their sorority, one woman must decide whether to hide the truth from the group or jeopardize her own hopes and dreams. Sure to appeal to readers of Kathleen Tessaro and Suzanne Rindell, Glimmer As You Can captures the heartbeat of an era and the ambitions of a generation of women living in a man’s world–a world threatened by a wave of change.
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The year is 1962 and the location is Brooklyn. There is a high end dress shop here that operates as a women’s club in the evenings called The Starlite. As the word about it gets out, more women starting attending the evening celebrations of music and poetry and just being free of their daily lives. The book is centered around three main characters:
Madeline owns the shop and started the women’s club. She had been married to a local politician who cheated on her and demeaned her. She finds freedom in her life though the female friendships that she makes at the club.
Elaine, a British ex-pat struggling to save her relationship but wondering if it’s really worth saving. Her boyfriend seems determined to keep her at his side while he drinks and parties and she longs to get a job in journalism and live her own life,
Lisa is a Pan-Am stewardess who is dreaming of marriage with her boyfriend. Then she can quit her job and rely on him to take care of her until she realizes that this may not be the life she is looking for when she becomes friends with Madeline and Elaine and begins to long for the freedom to live her life as she wants to.
The world deals these three woman a lot of sorrow and bad luck but their friendships helps them get through and the social cub helps them learn what life can really be like.
Glimmer as You Can is a beautifully written novel about female friendships — friends who are available to help no matter what the circumstances. In a time period when women were just beginning to break out of the mold of the 50s, friendships were the way to find and celebrate new freedoms. Life has changed considerably for women since the early 60s but one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of friends.
Character-focused, historical women’s fiction set in early 1960s Brooklyn. Women from different walks of life but constrained by the same societal limitations find stolen moments of freedom at a social club run by the bullied ex-wife of a corrupt politician.
Excellent character development of the female characters. Each seems distinct and relatable, from the naïve flight attendant to the fact-checker who wants to be a reporter. The historical setting is well drawn, and the introduction of historical events like the Cuban Missile Crisis is deftly handled, providing a mounting sense of peril in the narrative and a motivation for a character’s leap of faith.
The male characters are not so well developed. Except for one peripheral character, they are one-dimensional disasters, varying only in the primary misery they inflict – lecher, liar, lout, lush. The linear narrative builds slowly, and the reader will see the train wreck far before the characters encounter it. That is not a criticism. It is, I think, part of the point: the women’s lives are so cruelly circumscribed that it is difficult for them to avoid harm.
Some readers may be heartened by how much has changed since the time of this book, others dismayed by how little. Either way, this well-written evocation of the power to be oneself and show oneself resonates across decades.
Recommended.
Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Martin’s Brooklyn-set debut is a love letter to the women of the past whose struggles and successes still feel familiar today. The novel’s mix of hope and fear, empowerment and disappointment, entanglement and freedom will break, then mend, your heart.
Thank you Danielle Martin, Alcove Press & TLC Book Tours for #gifting me a copy of this book for the book tour.
This is a story about three ladies living in the early 1960s. Each lady is in a different stage of their life but they all three attend the after hours women’s social club at the Starlight.
This is a character driven story that made me thankful to be born in later decades. When I think of the 60s, I don’t feel like it wasn’t that long ago but man how things have changed. Glimmer As You Can made me appreciate how far we as women have come in the last 60yrs.
I struggled a bit with the pace of this book and the almost anti-climatic ending. This is a slow moving book but the few major turns seemed to come almost out of nowhere and with very little follow through.