Book dossier

Skin and Bones

by Thorne Smith

A standard Thorne Smith plot: a man with more intelligence and a less conventional character than his commuter-belt suburban neighbours is catapulted out of the stultifying situation by a comic supernatural breakdown of normality which hurtles him through a picaresque series of farcical episodes, with much snappy dialogue, sharp satire of suburban 1930s American mores, especially Prohibition, and meditations on the battle of the sexes. This story has the advantage that the hero's wife, though initially estranged, is out of the same basket, and so is an equally interesting and attractive character, with just as good dialogue.