The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Caroline Preston, 2011
HarperCollins
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061966903
Summary
For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie’s dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her unsuitable beau.
Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more, we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love. Once at Vassar, Frankie crosses paths with intellectuals and writers, among them “Vincent” (alumna Edna St. Vincent Millay), who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her writing.
When heartbreak finds her in New York, she sets off for Paris aboard the S.S. Mauritania, where she keeps company with two exiled Russian princes and a “spinster adventuress” who is paying her way across the Atlantic with her unused trousseau. In Paris, Frankie takes a garret apartment above Shakespeare & Company, the hub of expat life, only to have a certain ne’er-do-well captain from her past reappear. But when a family crisis compels Frankie to return to her small New England hometown, she finds exactly what she had been looking for all along.
Author of the New York Times Notable Book Jackie by Josie, Caroline Preston pulls from her extraordinary collection of vintage ephemera to create the first-ever scrapbook novel, transporting us back to the vibrant, burgeoning bohemian culture of the 1920s and introducing us to an unforgettable heroine, the spirited, ambitious, and lovely Frankie Pratt. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 25, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A.,
Brown University
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia
As a girl growing up in Lake Forest, Illinois, Caroline Preston used to pore through her grandmother’s and mother’s scrapbooks and started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school. She majored in American Studies at Dartmouth College, and received a master’s in American Civilization from Brown University. Inspired by her interest in manuscripts and ephemera, she worked as an archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Preston is the author of three previous novels. Jackie by Josie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. Gatsby’s Girl chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. In The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, she has drawn from her own collection of vintage ephemera to create a novel in the unique form of a scrapbook.
Preston has been awarded a Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale, where she is a Distinguished Artist. She lives with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman, in Charlottesville, Virginia and has three mostly grown-up sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a retro delight. Meticulously assembled and designed by the author from her own huge collection of memorabilia, it turns scrapbooking into a literary art form. Fans of the Roaring ’20s, Nick Bantock and modernism will all find something of value in Preston’s nostalgic ephemera.
Washington Post
Somehow, Preston manages to make this scene feel fresh—partly because [this] really is a scrapbook, each page composed of artifacts: advertisements, yearbook photos, ticket stubs, menus from the automat, and paper dolls modeling their finest.... [I]ts vintage graphics and sweet, sincere storytelling make it a pure pleasure.
Boston Globe
Literal, literary and lovely....Preston’s book is a visual journey unlike any other novel out there right now....Can be devoured in the course of a pot of tea on a cold day [but] pick [it] up the next day just to look at the images.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In her whimsical mash-up of historical fiction and scrapbooking, Caroline Preston uses vintage images and artifacts, paper ephemera and flapper-era souvenirs.... Apparently no junk shop or eBay seller was spared in Preston’s search for ways to bring her fictional heroine to life.
O Magazine
The epistolary novel is ages old, the Twitter novel a la mode, but...The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt—to my knowledge—is the first scrapbook novel....[A] charming and transporting story, a collage of vintage memorabilia...and other ephemera depicts the adventures of an aspiring flapper-era writer.
Vanity Fair
When she graduates from high school in 1920, Frankie gets a scrapbook and her father's old Corona, which keeps her busy at Vassar and thereafter, as she pursues a writing career and sails for France on the SS Mauritania. Her story is illustrated with various memorabilia appropriate to scrapbooking: vintage postcards, magazine ads, ticket stubs, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, menus, and more.
Library Journal
Selecting from her own collection of period mementos, Preston (Gatsby's Girl, 2006, etc.) creates a literal scrapbook for a young New Hampshire woman coming of age in the 1920s. Frankie receives a blank scrapbook and her deceased father's typewriter as high-school graduation gifts and begins to record her adventures with the keepsakes she collects. Although Vassar offers Frankie a scholarship, Frankie still can't afford to attend college. Instead she takes a job caring for elderly Mrs. Pingree (see old debutante picture). The dowager's visiting nephew Jamie, a dashing, emotionally damaged World War I vet in his 30s, emotionally seduces 17-year-old Frankie (see his scribbled notes). When the not-yet-sexual affair is discovered, Mrs. Pingree gives Frankie a $1,000 check (see society-pages article about Jamie's wife). Soon Frankie heads off to Vassar, a haven of socialites and bluestockings (see bridge score card, pack of bobbed hair pins). Her rich, intellectual but neurotic Jewish roommate Allegra is a supportive friend until Frankie wins the literary prize (read snippet of Frankie's story about Jamie romance). After graduation, Frankie moves to Greenwich Village and finds a job at True Story. Allegra's brother Oliver, working at a new magazine called the New Yorker, becomes her constant companion. Though smart, kind and attentive (see admission tickets to movies, dancehalls, ballgames), he doesn't propose. When Frankie realizes why, she goes to Paris (see Cunard baggage sticker), where the past catches up with her and a whole new chapter of life starts. Lighter than lightweight but undeniably fun, largely because Preston is having so much fun herself.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Caution—spoilers ahead):
1. What can you glean of Frankie Pratt's personality and character from her scrapbook? How would you describe her? Is there depth to Frankie—both as a fictional character and a human being? In other words, does the scrapbook medium lend itself to character development? If so, how has the author achieved it?
2. What takes place—what is said—between Frankie's mother and Mrs. Pingree? Exactly what kind of "deal" is struck? What do you make of the check for $1,000?
3. How does Frankie differ from her Vassar roommate? How would you describe Allegra Wolf? What influence does she have on Frankie—is it a healthy influence or not? Why does Allegra cultivate Frankie's friendship? What does Frankie gain from the relationship?
4. What about the types of literature the two roommates are drawn to? How do their literary preferences differ...and what do those differences suggest about the young women?
5. During Christmas break of her freshman year, Frankie realizes her mother has "taken on extra nursing jobs to make ends meet." Mrs. Pratt says to her daughter, "I'm so glad you escaped." How does Frankie feel about the sacrifice her mother is making? What are your thoughts?
6. Throughout the book, Frankie is exposed to people of wealth and privilege—with Mrs. Pingree, at Vassar, in New York, on the Mauritania, and in Paris. To what extent do these class distinctions shape Frankie's approach to life?
7. Why is Frankie drawn to Edna St. Vincent Millay? Talk about Millay's poem, "Lament," and its expression of loss. Why does the poem appeal to Frankie?
8. Why does Allegra Wolf not want to introduce Frankie to her brother Oliver? What is Oliver's reasoning?
9. What do you make of Captain Pingree? What are his feelings toward Frankie during the summer she works for his mother and during her stay in Paris? Are his intentions "honorable"? Why does he wish her to leave Paris?
10. In what way is Frankie a sort of Forrest Gump figure?
11. Would you say that Frankie exemplifies the typical woman of her time...or does she challenge accepted mores?
12. Talk about your experience reading the scrapbook-as-novel. What do you think of using such as a medium as the basis for a novel? Does it work? Is it as rich an experience as reading a novel of words? Richer? Have you read other graphic novels before? What about other modes of literary "text"—letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, email, PowerPoint (Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad), or Twitter? How successful are these mediums, particularly the newer ones? Why do authors attempt them—what do you think they want to accomplish?
13. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is considered historical fiction as well as a graphic novel. Does Caroline Preston's use of memorabilia—photos, ads, book jackets, ticket stubs, buttons, menus, and more—enhance your understanding of the 1920s and '30s? What have you learned about the era that you didn't know before?
14. What does Frankie Pratt learn by the end of the novel? Has she matured or grown? If so, in what ways?
15. Are you satisfied with the ending? Has Frankie sacrificed her dreams by returning to New Hampshire? Has she given up...or has she gained something more valuable? Will her life as a wife exclude life as a writer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)