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New York, 1963.
For four young women, brought together by the impossibly small Upper East Side town house they share, it is a time of possibilities, of things to come. A time of newfound freedom, of careers their mothers never considered, of imagining lovers into husbands and families of their own.
Leigh, Cody, Vanessa and Susan. Although their dreams are different, they share secrets and fears, high spirits and higher hopes. But as the world around them changes, the decisions they make in that fateful year are challenged. Each on her own path, they will learn that friendship can shift in unexpected ways, that love is more complex than they imagined and that happiness is sometimes found where they least expect it.
Before they married they planned to live fully, of course. They were filled with wonder and optimism and looking forward to adventures. None of them was a native New Yorker, and to them New York was the magical city. Everything would happen here, whatever everything was.
When she looked at the few photographs she had of the four of them in those days, Leigh was surprised at how soft their faces looked, almost un-formed. Almost blank. But there were all kinds of emotions hiding underneath those unrevealing faces: anxiety, doubt (despite the arrogance), and often confusion. At times they felt deeply inadequate. They knew they were naïve, and they wanted to learn.
When those girls looked in the mirror it was to put on their eyeliner, to do their hair. They didn't question the face they saw there, or feel sad at its mortality, its impermanence. Age was a terrible thing, Leigh thought, at sixty now and knowing a great deal more. Age made you invisible. It made you know too much, too late. No one would want that knowledge at twenty-three. So of course, when older people told you what was in store, you thought it would never happen to you. Or, at least, happen so many years later that it was unimaginable.
They had been four young women on the cusp of great social and moral change; the end of the fifties behind them, the rise of the sixties still a few years away. They listened to Beach Boys music, they all wanted to look and dress like Jackie Kennedy, they knew there was civil unrest and that many thousands of people were marching on Washington, and that there was something going on in Vietnam, which was sort of like a war, but not really. The truth was they hardly read the newspapers.
They were Leigh and Cady and Vanessa and Susan. She, Leigh Owen, was the calm at the heart of the whirlwind; the tall, self-possessed blonde who got elected class president. She had always known she had responsibilities, although sometimes a moment of unexpected recklessness surprised her. Cady Fineman was the emotional one. Cady had strong opinions and stronger passions. Cady was the romantic one and, Leigh had to admit, she was a bit of a princess. Vanessa Preet was the gorgeous one, and the one who most needed freedom and adventure. The stewardess who flew high, even when she was on the ground. And Susan Brown? Well, Leigh had finally realized, as much as they knew about her, none of them had ever really known Susan at all.
Sleeping and dreaming side by side, they could not know that the decisions they made in 1963 would be challenged later, not only because they had been young when they made them but because the world itself was going to transform around them. And then, of course, there were the events in their young lives that no one could control ... the ones that changed everything.
It was late winter of 1963, and Leigh Owen, who was twenty-three and working as an underpaid secretary at the powerful Star Management talent agency, was tired of living in a hovel. Her fifth-floor walk-up apartment above a restaurant always smelled of fish and grease. It was one tiny room that looked out on a dismal street below her fire escape, and contained two twin beds only a foot apart - what could she have been thinking of, a guest? - two straight chairs, and a small dresser; a plenitude of furniture that made walking around her apartment an obstacle course that resulted too often in bruises. She had no air conditioner so it was hot and even smellier in summer, and her landlord was stingy with heat so it was cold in winter. No matter how much she cleaned it - and there wasn't much time for a single girl in New York to clean apartments - her studio still looked grimy.
She knew she had to face the fact that she just couldn't live alone any longer. She needed a better place, and she would need roommates, otherwise she couldn't afford the hundred dollars or more a month that decent living quarters would require.
She was an efficient person, as they often told her at work, and so it didn't take her long to find an apartment she immediately fell in love with. It was a one bedroom with a living room and kitchen in a stately old town house on the Upper East Side located on a quiet tree-lined street of other similar houses. It was only one flight up, which was a relief. There was an air conditioner in the bedroom window, three closets, and the living room looked huge to her, with a bay window overlooking the lovely street, and a non-working but still picturesque fireplace in one wall.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Room-Mating Season by Rona Jaffe Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Anonymous
Posted May 25, 2004
I love this book,beggining in the sixties to present times this book follows three girls lives and their search for love,and a happy life through the changing of times. I would recomend this book to anyone
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Overview
New York, 1963.
For four young women, brought together by the impossibly small Upper East Side town house they share, it is a time of possibilities, of things to come. A time of newfound freedom, of careers their mothers never considered, of imagining lovers into husbands and families of their own.
Leigh, Cody, Vanessa and Susan. Although their dreams are different, they share secrets and fears, high spirits and higher hopes. But as the world ...