The Best of Everything - by Rona Jaffe (Paperback)

About the Book

Almost 50 years after its initial publication, this novel remains touchingly--and sometimes hilariously--true to the struggles women face in the city. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office; nave April, who reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; and Gregg, the actress with a secret yearning for domesticity.

Book Synopsis

"Sixty years later, Jaffe's classic still strikes a chord, this time eerily prescient regarding so many of the circumstances surrounding sexual harassment that paved the way toward the #MeToo movement." -Buzzfeed

When Rona Jaffe's superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Almost sixty years later, The Best of Everything remains touchingly--and sometimes hilariously--true to the personal and professional struggles women face in the city. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office; naïve country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; and Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Jaffe follows their adventures with intelligence, sympathy, and prose as sharp as a paper cut.

Review Quotes

"I finally picked it up recently and was blown away by Jaffe's sharp, fizzy writing; her pointed analysis of women's roles and restrictions; and her matter-of-fact depiction of sexual harassment in the workplace decades before the Clarence Thomas hearings or #MeToo...I had no idea that anyone in the '50s was writing like this."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Jaffe... writes at the breakneck pace of a Sex and the City season finale and with the wry knowingness of a Nora Ephron novel...it's by turns enraging and poignant to read this book with post-#MeToo eyes, to appreciate how much women's lives have changed in the intervening decades and what's at stake when our hard-won rights to workplace equality and abortion care are threatened."
--Forward

"Lively, delightful and heartbreaking... The book is not tawdry; it's terrific...'The Best of Everything' seized the mood of the moment and told the truth, and women by the millions devoured it. Sixty-five years later, I did, too."
--Star Tribune

"An incredibly pleasurable and devastating novel -- do yourself a favor and get a copy."
--The Cut

"At no point in the story do [the characters] really 'make it, ' but in the meantime, they get as much from the world around them as they possibly can, trying to wrangle proposals or free steaks or promotions or raises out of the men who hold sway over their life. The intensity of their desire, their desperation, is riveting."
--The Atlantic

"Sixty years later, Jaffe's classic still strikes a chord, this time eerily prescient regarding so many of the circumstances surrounding sexual harassment that paved the way toward the #MeToo movement."
--BuzzFeed

About the Author

Rona Jaffe is the New York Times bestselling author of the internationally acclaimed novels The Road Taken, The Cousins, Family Secrets, and Five Women, as well as the classic bestsellers Class Reunion and The Best of Everything. She is the founder of the Rona Jaffe Foundation, which presents a national literary award to promising female writers.