Mildred Pierce. By James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce

James M. Cain

Everyman's Library. First Published 1941.

Mildred Pierce is a Southern California housewife who develops her pie-making skills into a decent, mid-level, restaurant business and uses that to get over her desertion by her nice, but feckless husband, who has lost his comfortable fortune, and leaves her and her two daughters, the elder of them just approaching teenage. This is the first part of the story, and is full of details of the making food and serving it and financing the venture. The next, more interesting part of the story is her effort to retain the love and respect of her classy, but cold, elder daughter, Veda, after loosing the younger one to a sudden, fatal disease. She scrounges and sacrifices to get an expensive piano and more expensive lessons for Veda because she believes her daughter is a genius with the instrument. Veda thinks so too, until a professional musician disabuses them both of that idea. Veda doesn't give up, but cold-bloodedly keeps using her mother's money, friends and contacts to further her own career in music, now as a singer, while all the while despising her parent for her middle class background and lack of sophistication. At the end of the story, Veda elopes with Mildred's high class lover to pursue a career in commercial singing, and Mildred is back where she started, having lost her business, and remarried her first husband. 

Not a crime story, and different in focus from the previous two stories in the collection (see previous blog), this one is not even a morality tale. But I liked this better than the other two. The focal point of the book is the psychological tension between mother and daughter. Their characters are well etched, though somewhat exaggerated. The writing style is sparse, except when its about music (or about the food). It's not a book that makes you feel good about anybody, and in that sense it is not a satisfying read. But I would still call it a good book because it the characters  and the story (minus the dramatic exaggerations) are so believable.