Molly Make Believe Lacks Substance Where It’s Needed

Molly Make-Believe has a clever plot device and two witty lead characters.  A better writer than Eleanor Hallowell Abbott might have developed them into a marvelous novel instead of  just an amusing bit of fluff.

Carl Stanton, 32, a rubber broker, is confined to his bed one Boston winter with rheumatism. His fiancée, Cornelia, who is “big and bland and blonde and beautiful,” has gone to Florida with her mother.

Carl realizes Cornelia is stingy with affection when she refuses to write to him even weekly when she’s away.  Instead she gives him an ad for The Serial-Letter Company, which advertises “Real Letters for Imaginary Persons.”

Carl orders a six-week  ‘edition de luxe’ subscription to love-letter serials, which he plans to paste into a scrap-book to give Cornelia as a textbook for the “newly engaged girl.”

When the handwritten, clever, and utterly charming letters begin arriving from “Molly Make-Believe” accompanied by appropriate gifts, Carl is entranced.

Up to that point, the novel is wonderful.

When Carl decides to find Molly, things fall apart.

The plot calls for detective work, and Abbott simply has Carl hire a detective. That’s not a sufficiently challenging task for the hero of a  romance novel, not even one who is a rubber broker with rheumatism.

© 2011 Linda Gorton Aragoni