Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Book Review: Cancel All Our Vows by John D. McDonald (1953)

Well, I bought a used library paperback copy of this book from the St. Louis County Library as a discard, so I only paid a quarter for it. On the other hand, it is a used library copy of a paperback, so I am making no great investment in my personal collection. Still, I had not seen the book before, and I love John D. McDonald's Travis McGee books and most of his other books (if you're currently holed up in Florida, I heartily recommend you ride out the storm with Condominium).

This book precedes the heyday of John D. MacDonald's writing career. The earliest McGee novel hits the scene in 1964, and McGee will lament about the migration to Florida that takes place when air conditioners become prevalent. Cancel All Our Vows precedes that era; the main male character is an executive, and the storyline takes place in a heat wave from which the characters retreat.

Unlike most of MacDonald's other novels, this book is not crime fiction--a distinction blurred purposefully by the paperback publisher, who puts a gun on the cover even though one does not discharge anywhere in the book (what would Checkov say? Not, "Pardon me, we're looking for the nuclear wessels--that's another Checkov, you damn kids).

This book reminds me more of Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Both deal with attitudes about adultery and marriage, and both are set in the decade after World War II--although Cancel All Our Vows was written 13 years before Valley of the Dolls.

This book deals with said executive, having a midlife crisis (both he and his wife are getting old--they're in their thirties! Undertakers are standing by!). When he meets the wife of a man he's just hired, he starts thinking that cheating might be the answer to his emotional doldrums. He's got a good house, a good wife, good job, good kids, the good life, but he's missing something. Something illicit sex might provide. His wife notices and thinks about a fling of her own. Unfortunately, at the last minute she decides she doesn't want to fling, but the college boy forces his attention on her, and they're all flung. So she's an adultress in her mind and in her husband's, and then he goes with the little twitcher who drew his attention in the first chapter, and they drop peyote or something after she talks all crazy about opening the doors to the darkness of their souls, and woo doggy.

At times I felt bad for the main characters, and at other times I wished that maybe some deserved violence would come. But it didn't, and the book ends on a more hopeful note than Valley of the Dolls.

These books are most interesting to me for the insights they offer into the mindsets of the past. These sort of conundrums continue to occur--Heather and I watched Lost in Translation last night, and some of the themes are similar--but the characters react so differently based on society's expectations at the time. Interesting.

Which is about the most resounding endorsement I can give this book. Don't pick it up expecting a crime book, no matter what Fawcett wants you to think. The ploy must have worked, for this paperback I have is dated 1987, some 43 years after its first printing, and it's because John D. MacDonald wrote the book, not because the book grips readers that much.

The end.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:50 PM