The Debutantes

by June Flaum Singer

Book Overview

They're the poor, little rich girls whose glamorous exploits made headlines as they searched for the love that eluded them. "A smashing read."—Cosmopolitan "Joys and disaster tied into one grand... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380834022
• ISBN13: 9780380834020
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 598 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A GUILDED MESS!!!

FIRST...my confession: I 'borrowed' this book...*permanently*...from the shelving department of the Houston IKEA, while shopping with a friend for BILLY bookcases. Somehow, this lonely volume being used as a display piece high atop a towering BILLY case caught my eye; kindly disposed as I am toward exiled books, I rescued 'Debutantes' from its high perch, while my friend, Mr K, perused FLOM, BLIX, GRUNOBS and the other assorted particle board structures in that department. Little did I know that within minutes I would be busting out laughing so hard at the nonsense contained within 'Debutantes's pages, that I began to 'get looks' from the other customers in the store. So went the endless meanderings of 'Maeve,' 'Chrissy', 'Sally Furbush' and the rest of the cast of ludicrous blank slates inhabiting these pages... This book is bad, *BAD* I tell you -- on a GRAND scale! So bad, in fact, that I fought back tears...from the side-splitting laughter as I took in the overwrought tripe cast upon practically every page. Hardly a paragraph passed by where I wasn't howling, snickering or otherwise declaring aloud, "No, this HAS to be a publisher's deliberate joke!...can this book possibly be this MONUMENTALLY bad???" And just when I'd pause to think "Impossible!" -- ah, silly me! -- the page turns and out explodes yet another inspired stinker! I couldn't tear my eyes away flipping through chapter after chapter, reciting bleeding chunks of unpremeditated hilarity to my bookcase- shopping friend -- this was not mere reading; this was rubbernecking a 12-car pile up in prose. Passage after passage of absurdly trite dialog running amuck, a vast sea of phrase turns toward the soaringly insipid, more than 400 pages' worth of aimless floundering around the Brahman Connecticut coastline of the upper crust. And then, quite suddenly, it all comes to a *screeching* halt, as if someone told our authorette -- perhaps a concerned friend? -- "All right, dear, you need to STOP TYPING NOW...your publisher's been sitting in the kitchen waiting all afternoon, and he says he needs to catch the 4:15 back to New York...and by the way, isn't it time to feed your cats?" This pointless melodrama was no mean feat on the part of Ms Flaum Singer; she brings vividly to life the immortal observation made by yet another fictional debutante, Little Miss Glorie "And-I-Stepped-On-The-Ping-Pong-Ball!" Upson, in 'Auntie Mame': "Books are SO decorative, don't you think?" Indeed, IKEA thought so... which is how my purloined copy of 'Debutantes' nearly ended its days entombed in obscurity as a discarded display filler on the top shelf of a BILLY bookcase in a Houston showroom. It was my good fortune on that fateful day that the other books lounging about were written in IKEA's unintelligible faux Swede-speak, allowing this wretched masterpiece to call out to me in all its triumphant, dripping American purple prose "poo" (an interjective, by the way, which seasons many a page in this

A great paperback

A dirty little mistresspiece, rife with secrets, cotillions, rebellion, sulking, incest, and, um...yeah. Total pulp. Dig the large print in the original paperback version; it helps no matter what your age or blood alcohol level. I loved loved LOVED the cover illustration--one of those romance novelish wraparound vistas of hot women in rapturous poses...men gripping their shoulders. There are some passages in The Debutantes that have stayed with me for decades...a Jewish mother tarring her son's infested scalp, Ellis island-era...ripping his hair out in clumps. Ms Singer describes this method of de-lousing as "harsh but certain." The son goes on to be a magnate of something or other, and his daughter goes on to be one of The Debutantes...the beautiful Jewish outsider, too rich to not invite. I love it. EX-quisite garbage, my dears.

Very Addictive... A must read!!!

When I first read this book I was in the 11th grade. A friend had checked it out of the public library and said I must read this book. It took me two and a half days to read it, I literally could not put this book down. I did not sleep, or even do homework. That's just how good this book is. I had been searching for this book to own for almost 10 years. I found the story brought on a multitude of emotions; happy, sad, angry (very angry)... When reading this book, it was like I was there experiencing some the same things these girls were going trough. I love that the book took you through the eyes of each character and their life experiences. It also showed what it is like to have friends that no matter what happened, they would always be there for you in the end. A total must read!!

A terrific book.

When i first got this book, I really did not expect to be so engrossed in it. The writing is such, that you feel as if you know the characters personally, and their stories touch the soul. I found myself in tears on more than one occasion. Spanning 4 decades in the lives of 4 "poor" rich girls, (well, one not so rich) and the joys, sorrows and tragedies that touch their lives, this book is truly a moving experience. A great read...recommended.

A recomended book!

"In the landscape of the very rich and the very famous, at a Connecticut finishing school in the early 1940s, four young women of very different backgrounds first meet. They are the debutantes." "Spanning four decades, with forays into each young woman's history, "The Debutantes" is the story of the tempestuous, often tortured lives of these poor little rich girls."