The best of everything

A sensation when it first premiered in 1958, Jaffe's smart, dishy exposé of the desperate lives of young working women in Manhattan can now be seen as "a literary bellwether of the #MeToo movement," as New Yorker columnist Rachel Syme describes in her perceptive new introduction. The primary entrée into this uneasy, thrilling world is Caroline Bender, a poised, perspicacious Radcliffe grad on the rebound from a bad breakup and self-exiled into the typing pool at Fabian Publications, where her dawning professional aspirations are thwarted by the spiteful editor Miss Farrow and are ever at the mercy of some "furtive bony hand touching her knee." Jaffe, who interviewed 50 women while preparing the book, fills out her sampling with gossipy, conventional Mary Agnes; callow, wide-eyed Colorado transplant April Morrison; worldly but emotionally fragile actress Gregg Adams; and Barbara Lemont, a young single mother struggling for survival who is both objectified and rendered invisible. Beneath all the twisty intrigue and drollery, Jaffe makes readers care deeply about each of her characters' lives, dreams, and fates as they brave the predations and hazards of this man's world. VERDICT With its moving candor and keen wit, Jaffe's frank exploration of modern womanhood is an utterly engrossing period piece that still feels painfully timely.