This shaggy dog story from the American essayist glitters with wit and wisdom, but ultimately relies on its inspiration, ‘The Necklace’, to provide insight
Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace” features one of his most eloquent twists. An aspiring socialite borrows but mislays a precious diamond necklace and is reduced to penury by attempting to replace it. Only when she makes full restitution does she discover that the piece was a fake. The story has attracted plenty of admirers: Henry James reversed the premise for a tribute entitled “Paste”, in which presumed counterfeit gems are revealed to be genuine. Somerset Maugham based at least two stories, “Mr Know-All” and “A String of Beads”, on Maupassant’s model. Now, New York writer Sloane Crosley has created an exuberant homage of her own.
Crosley’s reputation rests on two collections of essays, How Did You Get This Number and I Was Told There’d Be Cake, whose wise-cracking prose and cosmopolitan style rest somewhere between David Sedaris’s quotidian wit and Candace Bushnell’s neurotic self-absorption. Her substantial debut novel marks a significant leap – as Crosley states on her website: “It’s one of the pleasures of essays, shutting a door and opening a new one, whereas one of the pleasures of a novel is opening the same door day after day.” It might be fairer to say that Crosley’s fictional style feels like hurtling down a long corridor rattling at all the doors in turn, and though some prove more enlightening than others it is invariably Maupassant who provides the key.
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