Bonnie Golightly’s main claim to fame is that she sued Truman Capote for libel, alleging that Holly Golightly in his novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s was based on her. Her allegation was so flimsy that the matter never went to court. Bonnie Golightly wrote quite a few books. She later joined the counter-culture and wrote books about LSD.
One can’t help suspecting that the title Beat Girl was chosen (probably by her publisher) in a desperate attempt to cash in on the craze for all things Beat. There are beatniks in the book but they don’t appear until very late in the story.
Mostly it’s the tale of a rather mixed-up seventeen-year-old heiress, Chloe. After her mother’s death Chloe is packed off to an aunt in England. After a chance meeting with an old flame, a young American named Pritchard Allyn, Chloe decides to return to New York. Pritchard was the man to whom she lost her virginity some time earlier so he’s a bit special to her even though she’s since slept with countless men. Chloe at this stage is no beatnik but she is a bit of a wild child, and she’s a very rich wild child.
The entire book focuses on Chloe’s romantic dramas. Which is OK but if you’re expecting a sleaze novel or a hardboiled story or something noirish or beatsploitation (which are the kinds of things you would expect from a Stark House reprint) you’re going to be disappointed. It’s just a regular romantic melodrama with barely a hint of sleaze. I guess in 1959 a female protagonist who admits to promiscuity would have been shocking, and most sleaze fiction of this era is very tame, but in this case the actual sleaze content is close to zero.
And beatniks make only a very brief appearance, mostly as a warning to innocent young girls to stay away from these dangerous weirdos. Having the beatniks as dangerous weirdos might have been fun, except that they don’t seem very dangerous or very weird.
Chloe is your basic spoilt rich brat. She’s the narrator and you may very well grow tired of her. She feels sorry for herself a lot. In fact most of the characters spend a good deal of time on self-pity. I guess being rich is pretty tough.
Of course nobody in Chloe’s family understands her. Her husband’s parents are horrible to her. They seem to regard her a spoilt rich brat. It’s hard to disagree with them. They’re also only moderately rich and didn’t go to the very best schools which makes them beneath contempt in Chloe’s eyes. We don’t know how Chloe feels abut the working class. She’s never met a working-class person. Apart from the servants of course. The servants look up to her, which is only right and proper as far as Chloe is concerned.
As you may have gathered it’s difficult to like any of the characters.
Chloe’s romantic woes are not especially interesting.
Overall the book just didn’t grab my interest very much at all. I don’t think I could seriously recommend it.
The other books in the Stark House Beatnik Trio are Dell Holland’s The Far Out Ones (which is very enjoyable) and Richard E. Geis’s Like Crazy, Man (which is so-so). I do think it’s cool that Stark House are making these very obscure beatsploitation titles available even if the genre does seem to be a bit hit-or-miss.
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