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The Town in Bloom

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 120 ratings · 19 reviews

London's theatre world of the 1920's provides a glittering backdrop for Mouse, an eighteen-year-old Lancashire girl intent on a stage career. She tells the story herself with the utmost frankness and with an authenticity which derives from Dodie Smith's own wide experience as both actress and playwright.

Mouse never felt that her nickname fully suited her; tiny she might be...more

Hardcover, 271 pages

Published 1965 by Little, Brown

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Oct 12, 2007 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who wants to pursue the stage

Shelves: mycuppa

The Town in Bloom offers a fascinating glimpse into lives of three young women who decide to pursue the London stage in the 1920s. They live in a boarding house and go on continual audiitions. When they're not working, they're busy gossiping, having fun, and falling in love.

This book wonderfully captures the blissful feeling of being young and free. I'm sure a great deal of this story draws upon the author's own experiences as a young actress. One thing that I find so refreshing about her chara...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Donna LaValley rated it 4 of 5 stars

“The Town In Bloom” (1965): This novel followed “The New Moon With The Old” in Dodie Smith’s novels. I’d like to give it 3.5 stars instead of 4. It was less wonderful than its predecessor and miles away from “I Capture The Castle.” The main character is “Mouse,” a small, funny, self-assured young woman who goes to London to become a stage actress. With great luck she is taken into friendship at the The Club (a sort of boarding house/hotel for women connected to the theatre) who become dear, life...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dodie Smith never fails to entertain, and this book is no exception, but it's definitely the least impressive of all her novels. I am not sure why the book jacket describes it better than I Capture the Castle, as it most certainly is not. For theatre buffs, it might have more to offer, as its the story of a young woman who moves to London in the 1920s to pursue her dreams of acting, ending up in a club hotel for actors and befriending Molly, Zelle, and Lillian, who are also involved in the theat...more Dodie Smith never fails to entertain, and this book is no exception, but it's definitely the least impressive of all her novels. I am not sure why the book jacket describes it better than I Capture the Castle, as it most certainly is not. For theatre buffs, it might have more to offer, as its the story of a young woman who moves to London in the 1920s to pursue her dreams of acting, ending up in a club hotel for actors and befriending Molly, Zelle, and Lillian, who are also involved in the theatre. They give her the annoying nickname of Mouse, for reasons that aren't quite clear. Mouse desperately tries to get an acting role, but unfortunately she's not very good. That is probably an autobiographical snippet on the part of Dodie Smith, who also failed to launch her acting career, becoming a playwright and novelist instead. Mouse does end up working as a secretary for the famous actor-manager Rex Crossway at his theatre. She quickly falls in love with him, presumably a bit of hero worship on her part, and they pursue an affair although he is married. But Crossway is an unrepentant philander. He is also having an on-again, off-again affair with his assistant, and eventually takes up with Mouse's friend Lillian when she is cast in one of his plays. It's never clear why all these women fall so hard for Crossway, even though they are well aware of the fact that infidelity is a way of life for him. They all tolerate his affairs, and Mouse only breaks it off because she wants to prevent Crossway's wife from divorcing him.

Fast forward to the 1960s, and Molly, Mouse, and Lillian continue to meet regularly, but Zelle has been MIA for decades. Sadly, what the other girls thought was her affluence turned out to be the fruits of her being a rich man's mistress, and when she decided to quit him, she was left penniless and forced to become a charwoman to support herself. Molly married her beau Hal, and Lillian had married Crossway after revealing their affair to his wife, who finally divorced him. Oddly enough, Mouse seems to still bear some affection for the aging Crossway, as does his long-suffering secretary. The way the three women (and probably more) seem to peaceably share Crossway's affections without jealousy seems very odd, a strange version of polygamy. That is the most troubling aspect of the book, which made it a bit unpalatable for me. That, and the fact that it's about the theatrical world, and I've always found the narcissism of actors and their overly-dramatic behaviour off-stage to be rather distasteful. And yet, Dodie Smith does know how to advance the plot and entertain the reader. I think this book fails a bit with characterization, but nonetheless it kept me turning the pages. (less)

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Jan 19, 2013 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: anglophilia

The book starts and ends on a single day in London in the 1960s, with a long flashback to a summer in the 1920s making up most of the story.

Mouse, Molly and Lillian, now in their fifties and sixties, have a reunion lunch in a London restaurant. THey wait for the fourth member of their little group, Zelle, to show up, but in vain. Mouse later spots Zelle and follows her to her home and clears up the last mysteries of that summer in the 1920s when their fates were decided.

The story then really st...more The book starts and ends on a single day in London in the 1960s, with a long flashback to a summer in the 1920s making up most of the story.

Mouse, Molly and Lillian, now in their fifties and sixties, have a reunion lunch in a London restaurant. THey wait for the fourth member of their little group, Zelle, to show up, but in vain. Mouse later spots Zelle and follows her to her home and clears up the last mysteries of that summer in the 1920s when their fates were decided.

The story then really starts with a description of Mouse's arrival in London in the 1920s, armed with nothing more than her determination to become an actress, a reservation in a woman's hotel (the Club) and a letter of introduction to Rex Crossway, the last of the great actor-managers. She doesn't get an acting job, but Rex, who takes an immediate shine to the young girl, gives her a job as secretarial assistant. She loves working in the glamorous world of the theatre, and even makes friends with the autocratic stage manager, Brice. Soon she has two new friends, both chorus girls living at the Club : Molly, a statuesque beauty whose desire is to marry and have a family, and the much more ambitious and ruthless Lillian. During a hapless attempt to get out of the rain that turns into a spot of breaking and entering, they meet Zelle, a mysterious girl with no job but plenty of money, and the trio becomes a quartet.

Rex sends Mouse to the country village where his brother Alex, the vicar, is staging a garden party with theatrical entertainments. Mouse invites her friends to the party. This turns out to be a momentous day. Molly meets the man she will marry. Zelle falls under the unctuous charm of Alex Crossway, and Mouse determinedly loses her virginity to Rex.

Rex's wife finds out about the episode at the garden party and threatens to file for divorce, so Mouse has to convince her that nothing happened. Lillian gets a part in Rex' new play and it becomes clear that she too, is falling for him. Mouse realizes that Zelle is in fact a kept woman, and when Lillian lets Alex in on this scandalous secret, he immediately cancels his appointment to see Zelle. Zelle is devastated and disappears. Molly, who has discovered that she was an illegitimate child, is agonizing about whether to marry the respectable Hal or not.

In the end, Mouse leaves the theatre and goes off to another city and another life with Brice.

In the last chapter, we find out how the girls' lives went after that summer. Lillian married Rex after his divorce, but their union was never very happy. Rex is now in his eighties, still charming but demanding, irritable and suffering increasing memory loss. Molly is blissfully happy with her husband and her family. Mouse has lived an adventurous life, pursuing many interests and even now planning to take up painting. And Zelle, when Mouse finally runs her to ground, turns out to have lived a respectable life as a cleaning woman with a sincere interest in religion.

I liked Dodie Smith's characters. Mouse describes herself as "small but not shy". She gets what she wants, more or less, and deals with the challenges in her life without sentimentality. I also noticed that the girls' attitude toward sex was very matter of fact. Lillian had had lovers. Zelle was a paid mistress. Mouse throws herself at Rex. And Molly essentially forces Hal to go off for a weekend of premarital sex, despite his misgivings. There is a hilarious scene where they arrive at the hotel but don't feel comfortable getting into bed just yet. So they go for a walk and explore a prehistorical figure drawn in the ground nearby. This turns out to be a figure of a man with grotesque genitals, but the nearsighted Molly doesn't realize this, nor does she understand why Hal is becoming increasingly nearvous. So there she is, eager to prove to Hal that he doesn't have to marry her in order to sleep with her, and he is unmanned by the fear that his lovely girl might in fact be a raving nymphomaniac.

The tone of the book is one of contrasts, especially towards the end. The four girls have lived very different lives, but all of their fates were largely determined by that one summer. Molly is placidly content. Mouse has lived a Bohemian life, but can still look towards the future with eagerness. Lillian got what she plotted for -Rex and his lovely house- but found out that it gave her no joy. So she lives mainly in the past. And Zelle is just another hardworking single woman trying to keep her head above water.

The book reminded me a little of "The Girls of Slender Means" by Muriel Spark, which is also set in a London women's hotel, but 20 years later, and also describes how the friendship of women often has an element of competition and spite in it.
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Jan 05, 2013 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned-books, books-i-read-in-2013

This book was good but, it made me sad. It reminded me a little bit of I Capture The Castle, but for an older audience. Both books don't have happy endings, and Smith leaves some strings untied. Although I did like this book, the characters frustrated me. The main character is the narrator and her nickname is Mouse, her real name is never given. The story covers the summer she spent working as a secretary for a theater as she was an aspiring actress. The other main characters are her three frien...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Marija rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-classics

The main reason why I loved Mary McCarthy’s The Group was the fact that it was so true to life. In some ways, Dodie Smith’s story is just like it. Smith does not describe a flowery tale of London theatre life...everything all buttons and bows. She is really honest and at times her honesty is quite brutal. Her story is not just about theatre life, but life in general...young girls exposed to life’s realities. What I really found interesting was that some of the things Smith is describing are stil...more

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Apr 11, 2012 V. Briceland rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's pretty easy to assume Dodie Smith's The Town in Bloom is autobiographical. It's not; Smith pored through her exhaustive diaries to produce four volumes of autobiography about her literary pursuits, her life in the theater, and her brief stint in Hollywood. But somehow everything in this novel about the maturation of a teen girl among the fast theatrical set of London in the nineteen-twenties feels autobiographical. Every richly-detailed chapter evokes a lost era of glamorous chorines and a...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Tahira rated it 4 of 5 stars

After completing the trinity of Dodie Smith's novels for adults, I've remembered why I appreciate her so much.

Similar to I Capture the Castle, The Town in Bloom offers readers a presentation of unapologetic feminism and liberation that so many of Smith's counterparts lacked. Dodie Smith was, in fact, a rather brazen writer for her time and while I do not know what British culture was like in the first half of the 20th century, I do know that in the states, we were just beginning to push the boun...more

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Dec 20, 2010 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Perhaps my expectations were too high--after all, I think I Capture the Castle is practically perfect. And it started out great--young girl off to London to try to break in to the Theater. Complete with fun actress friends and an almost dorm-like home situation.
But then she falls in love with the Wrong Man, and she knows it, and she still does it, and it's never clear why he's so fabulous (besides being the leading man and all). And there was a big lead up to a Pivotal Event, whic wasn't really...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Matthew Mainster rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have now read I Capture the Castle, The New Moon in with the Old, It Ends With Revelations, A Tale of Two Families, and this book ... I read them in that order, and it also happens to be in order of how I liked them. Despite being my least favorite of Dodie Smith's novels, this book stuck with me and I found myself stealing away to read it whenever I had a chance throughout the day. I feel like I'm getting pickier and pickier about books as I get older, so that's still saying something! I've h...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2012

I Capture the Castle is one of my favourite books and I hoped this would become a similar favourite. I've read it before and rereading it, I do find it charming and engaging. I love the background of the theatre and the character of Mouse is endearing. However, none of the other characters are really very rounded or well-realised. The theatre director is feckless and unoriginal, the friends are barely there. Still, it was a good, fun read.

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Jul 28, 2011 Rhonea Williams-Dillard rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Smith's book for her style of writing. She has a dry sense of humor, great wit, this book moves well. The friendship between the three woman is hilarious and touching. The plot moves along well. It's also nice to read a book that doesn' t have too much purple prose in it. I would have liked to seen more romance in this story, but I loved the romantic story - very realistic. I'd read this again.

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Jan 12, 2013 Molly rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure how I feel about this book: for much of it I simply felt like it was a rather fluffy look at life on the stage in 192- with a bullishly headstrong female character whose brazenness was at times somewhat unbelievable; then, however, I read the third (and final) section and felt like I gained more perspective on what Smith was trying to say. Re-read!

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Jan 23, 2009 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

A lighter outing than I Capture the Castle, examining the lives and especially loves of a group of women in 1930's London. The book is well written and the believable characters generate empathy and sympathy. The sexual mores of the period are particularly interesting and well described. The world that the book revolves around is that of the London theatre, which adds another layer of interest.

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Apr 09, 2009 Helen Davis rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this. It conveys the feel of an era and particular place very well. I was rather taken aback by the amount of and casual attitude towards sex, so this book was quite an education.

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Apr 05, 2013 Janice rated it 2 of 5 stars

While I loved this whole book until that last 30 or so pages. The ending left me so wanting I was mad I read it.

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Jul 06, 2012 Nikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though I felt the book dragged in places, the juicier parts made up for it.

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Apr 13, 2012 Kirsty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-for-review, received-for-review, bookgeeks-and-nudge, read-2012, beautiful-covers

My Bookgeeks review of The Town in Bloom can be found here:
http://www.nudgemenow.com/article/the...

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Mar 24, 2013 Lesley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another incredible offering from Dodie Smith. You can watch my full review here - http://youtu.be/baCrpAQRBYg

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May 21, 2013 Beate Lundstrom rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Shelves: wishlist

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May 13, 2013 Rachel marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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Shelves: 20th-century

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About Dodie Smith

Born Dorothy Gladys Smith in Lancashire, England, Dodie Smith was raised in Manchester (her memoir is titled "A Childhood in Manchester"). She was just an infant when her father died, and she grew up fatherless until age 14, when her mother remarried and the family moved to London. There she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and tried for a career as an actress, but with little success...more

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“Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?” — 57 people liked it

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