The Wisdom Of Eve by Mary Orr, 1946
The magic trick:
Great subject matter
Listen, this story is not as good as the movie it inspired, “All About Eve.” It just isn’t.
The plot boxes itself in by starting when it does – seeing Eve at the dressing room and then working backwards. It’s hard for the reader to find any suspense. It’s all in the past tense, so the stakes don’t seem all that high.
But it’s still fun.
I think its greatest attribute is its subject matter. There were probably four or five better ways to structure the story. But ultimately, when you have a Broadway behind-the-scenes story, full of backstabbing drama, it’s going to be a good read.
And that’s quite a trick on Orr’s part.
The selection:
“She said that she had married a young American flier and had been living in San Francisco because he had gone to the Pacific from there. I asked her how she got along and she said that at first she had had her husband’s allotment, but then he had been killed over Bougainville and since then she had lived very meagerly on his insurance.”
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