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Book Review: Betsy and Joe
Aug. 12th, 2023 08:20 amWe come to the end of Betsy’s high school years with Betsy and Joe! This is a book that must have presented a challenge for Lovelace, as the title itself tells you how it will end (Betsy and Joe, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G), and how do you spin out that romance for a whole book without silly misunderstandings?
Well, in the first place, this is senior year, and Lovelace takes full advantage of its Janus-faced nature. Excited though she is about her future, Betsy is also a person who savors each stage of life, and passes on to the next only after a long wistful look back. She’s loved her high school years, and to think that this is the last time she’ll have a first day of school - go to a high school dance - gather with the Crowd for a soda at Heinz’s - well, it’s all bittersweet.
The Crowd is a great help, too: of course we need to check in with everyone. Tib’s dating the new football star; Tacy’s developing into quite a good singer (although she suffers terribly from stage fright). Betsy’s neighbor Cab had to quit school at the end of the last book after his father died, but his class nonetheless invites him to all the big senior year events. And how about Betsy’s big sister Julia? She’s studying opera in Berlin, where she’s been invited to stay in a castle! (Her letters home are based on the letters from Lovelace’s real-life sister Kathleen.) And little sister Margaret? Ah, well, she’s cross because Betsy favors Joe over Margaret’s favorite Tony.
Yes, there’s also a love triangle, although really in name only: Betsy knows all along that Joe’s the one she loves, but she doesn’t want to hurt Tony’s feelings by dropping him all of a sudden. As Julia points out on her return from Berlin, it wasn’t actually kind to let him hope when there was no hope, but of course it’s very hard to see that when you’re seventeen.
Of course Joe doesn’t know that he’s Betsy’s secret favorite, so for a while they break up. And while they’re broken up, who should be the first of the Crowd to get engaged but… Tacy! Yes, Tacy who is not interested in boys. (Real-life Tacy did get married, although about a decade after high school. In general, everyone’s marriages seem to have been moved forward five to ten years, probably for reasons of dramatic unity, but perhaps also because getting married young was all the rage in the post World War II years?)
In a different book I might find Betsy & Joe’s break-up contrived, but the execution makes it work for me, because it grows so naturally out of their characters: it’s very characteristic for Betsy to flinch from hurting anyone’s feelings, and also very characteristic for Joe to withdraw when he feels hurt. They both have a little bit of growing up to do before they can be together at the end of the book.
***
There are still two more Betsy books to go (next one up is one of my favorites, Betsy and the Great World, hooray!), but I’m well on track to get them done in the next few weeks, so I’m going to detour through Carney’s House Party, which is next in line both in publication order and in internal chronology. My recollection is that the central romance in Carney’s House Party felt far more reliant on literary tropes than any of the others in the series; we’ll see how I feel about it this time around.
Well, in the first place, this is senior year, and Lovelace takes full advantage of its Janus-faced nature. Excited though she is about her future, Betsy is also a person who savors each stage of life, and passes on to the next only after a long wistful look back. She’s loved her high school years, and to think that this is the last time she’ll have a first day of school - go to a high school dance - gather with the Crowd for a soda at Heinz’s - well, it’s all bittersweet.
The Crowd is a great help, too: of course we need to check in with everyone. Tib’s dating the new football star; Tacy’s developing into quite a good singer (although she suffers terribly from stage fright). Betsy’s neighbor Cab had to quit school at the end of the last book after his father died, but his class nonetheless invites him to all the big senior year events. And how about Betsy’s big sister Julia? She’s studying opera in Berlin, where she’s been invited to stay in a castle! (Her letters home are based on the letters from Lovelace’s real-life sister Kathleen.) And little sister Margaret? Ah, well, she’s cross because Betsy favors Joe over Margaret’s favorite Tony.
Yes, there’s also a love triangle, although really in name only: Betsy knows all along that Joe’s the one she loves, but she doesn’t want to hurt Tony’s feelings by dropping him all of a sudden. As Julia points out on her return from Berlin, it wasn’t actually kind to let him hope when there was no hope, but of course it’s very hard to see that when you’re seventeen.
Of course Joe doesn’t know that he’s Betsy’s secret favorite, so for a while they break up. And while they’re broken up, who should be the first of the Crowd to get engaged but… Tacy! Yes, Tacy who is not interested in boys. (Real-life Tacy did get married, although about a decade after high school. In general, everyone’s marriages seem to have been moved forward five to ten years, probably for reasons of dramatic unity, but perhaps also because getting married young was all the rage in the post World War II years?)
In a different book I might find Betsy & Joe’s break-up contrived, but the execution makes it work for me, because it grows so naturally out of their characters: it’s very characteristic for Betsy to flinch from hurting anyone’s feelings, and also very characteristic for Joe to withdraw when he feels hurt. They both have a little bit of growing up to do before they can be together at the end of the book.
***
There are still two more Betsy books to go (next one up is one of my favorites, Betsy and the Great World, hooray!), but I’m well on track to get them done in the next few weeks, so I’m going to detour through Carney’s House Party, which is next in line both in publication order and in internal chronology. My recollection is that the central romance in Carney’s House Party felt far more reliant on literary tropes than any of the others in the series; we’ll see how I feel about it this time around.
