The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt - Caroline Preston

     I needed a light, fun read and since I've been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald lately I decided to try The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: a Novel in Pictures.  The novel tells the story of Frances Pratt, a young girl of the 1920's through a whimsical collection of Twenties ephemera. 
     The story and visuals take Frankie from high school in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire, Vassar College, Greenwich Village, Paris, and back.  Along the way she falls in love (several times), gets advice from Edna St. Vincent Millay (Vincent), and rents an apartment above Sylvia Beach's bookstore, Shakespeare and Company (the author's mother was actually the goddaughter of Sylvia Beach).
     Frankie is smart, spirited, and ambitious.  She writes the text of the scrapbook on her old Corona typewriter.  She yearns to be a writer and also to find love.  She gets a job editing a magazine, gets a story published, struggles to establish a life on her own, explores New York and Paris, and learns to drink.
     Frankie's story is delightful but the collection of vintage postcards, ticket stubs, menus, fabric swatches, and candy wrappers that are woven into her tale are exquisite.

     Its a wonderful trip through the bohemian, flapper culture of the 1920's.  I read a library copy but I'm very tempted to buy my own! 

~ Frances