In possibly one of the earliest examples of a movie tie-in, the copy I read was a 1931 reprint containing photos from the movie version. (The Bad Sister was based on The Flirt and is notable for being Bette Davis’ screen debut, with a minor role for Humphrey Bogart. What’s hilarious is that not only do the movie characters have different names than the characters in the book, nothing portrayed in the movie photos happens in the book at all.) This novel has that classic device of two sisters, one good and one thoroughly bad. The bad sister uses her feminine wiles to steal all the men and get everything she wants. There’s also a kid brother, who was my favorite character because he sees through everyone, plus he’s a bully who then gets bullied himself. I also enjoyed the witty, doomed, alcoholic character Richard Lindley and the con man character. The bad sister has to be punished at the end, which is kind of a downer. There was no room in 1913 for a woman to be anything but a saintly pushover. Other than that, a fun read. Similar themes to The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, but more trashy. Downfall: racism against a stereotypical manservant character. ( )

This was an enjoyable book, but not a great book...there were morsels of greatness, but they were packaged oddly, and thus it did not sail as high as i wanted it to. (I also read a very old & tired hardcover edition from 1913 containing glossy art pages of scenes along with warped pages, stains on the cover, and a binding barely holding together...which oddly enough, i enjoyed reading....you know....the challenge.....can i drag it with me for several weeks everywhere i go without completely destroying it?? I am happy to report i was successful!) Tarkington takes us on a summer journey in a regular American small town with the Madison family....parents, 3 children and a housekeeper. The daughters are older, beautiful, and about as different from each other in personality as they could be. Cora is an enormous flirt with very little compassion or empathy for anyone but herself.....a really annoying character about whom the book is about. She can barely care enough to ask or check in on her father who is in the home in very ill-health. Her sister Laura is the quiet one living in Cora's shadow, and 13-year-old Hedrick is the life of the party, a total hellion, who saved the book for me. I literally laughed out loud several times at his thoughts and antics. This is the second book i have read by Tarkington where he captures brilliantly the sense of being an early-teen boy in a family with sisters. The parents are barely parents, having allowed the flirt and the hell-raiser to become what they are with a vengeance. Laura is the rock. Strange interactions with young suitors for Cora, including a stranger from away, lead to a somewhat rambling story that does not go anywhere very interesting. One surprise startler near the end, which is always good, but otherwise not overly gripping. And the things i wanted to hear about at the end just were not there. Anyway, this is an earlier Tarkington piece, and it was not unpleasant. I continue to be a fan and look forward to the next one. ( )

Written in 1912, “The Flirt” is Booth Tarkington’s first “domestic” novel – one that deals with social relationships in a thinly disguised version of his own home town of Indianapolis. Abandoning plot complexities of his earlier work, the author’s focus is on characters and their development. The story concerns the Madisons, a well-to-do family consisting of the sisters Cora and Laura, their father, and brother. At the start of the novel, Valentine Corliss has returned to his Midwestern home after many years in Europe, seeking investors in an alleged Italian oil field. He draws Cora, her father, and her fiancé into his plan, and the plot traces the effects on their lives and relationships. The story is engaging, and told with Tarkington’s remarkable talent. It also shows insight into courting practices and relationships of a century past.

Despite the depths of emotion and a bit of violence, Tarkington never descends into melodrama – the tone ranges from humor to irony to pathos, and events of the story are redeemed by humanity and warmth. The main character Cora Madison is one of Tarkington’s most impressive literary creations. She is beautiful, irresponsible, manipulative, cunning, vain, and thoughtless. She successively attracts a man with her wiles, and then grows bored and dumps him. Her older sister Laura is introverted and timid, but her unimpressive appearance masks a talented and loving young woman. Another memorable character is their young brother Hedrick, a boy on the cusp of adolescence. (He is a prototype of the author’s Penrod, but without the latter’s redeeming qualities.) Chafing under his older sisters’ treatment, and despising their preoccupation with men, Hedrick sends Laura’s diary to a man she secretly loves -- and in an episode of pathos and revelation, sorrowfully regrets his cruelty.

The author's biographer James Woodress criticizes the novel as being somewhat incongruous, with male characters who are never quite convincing. He has a point, although I was not cognizant of these weaknesses while reading the book.

Tarkington has a talent with words that is seldom matched. His prose should be read slowly and savored. Below are a few samples that I thought worth saving:

(Corliss walks up his street on his return home, after 17 years abroad): A few of the oldest houses remained as he remembered them, and there were two or three relics of mansard and cupola days; but the herd of cast-iron deer that once guarded these lawns, standing sentinel to all true gentry: Whither were they fled? In his boyhood, one specimen betokened a family of position and affluence; two, one on each side of the front walk, spoke of a noble opulence; two and a fountain were overwhelming. He wondered in what obscure thickets that once proud herd now grazed; and then he smiled, as through a leafy opening of shrubbery he caught a glimpse of a last survivor, still loyally alert, the haughty head thrown back in everlasting challenge and one foreleg lifted, standing in a vast and shadowy backyard with a clothesline fastened to its antlers.

(Of the church choir director): He was a slender young man in hot black clothes; he wore the unfacaded collar fatally and unanimously adopted by all adam's-apple men of morals; he was washed, fair, flat-skulled, clean-minded, and industrious; and the only noise of any kind he ever made in the world was on Sunday.

(An epigram reflecting a 1912 perspective): The best of women are sometimes the readiest with impromptu statistics.

(A meditation on youth and aging): There is a song of parting, an intentionally pathetic song, which contains the line, "All the tomorrows shall be as today, " meaning equally gloomy. Young singers, loving this line, take care to pronounce the words with unusual distinctness: the listener may feel that the performer has the capacity for great and consistent suffering. It is not, of course, that youth loves unhappiness, but the appearance of it, its supposed picturesque- ness. Youth runs from what is pathetic, but hangs fondly upon pathos. It is the idea of sorrow, not sorrow, which charms: and so the young singer dwells upon those lingering tomorrows, happy in the conception of a permanent wretchedness incurred in the interest of sentiment. For youth believes in permanence.

It is when we are young that we say, "I shall never," and "I shall always," not knowing that we are only time's atoms in a crucible of incredible change. An old man scarce dares say, "I have never," for he knows that if he searches he will find, probably, that he has. "All, all is change."

For readers who love traditional fiction, and anyone who has enjoyed the writings of Booth Tarkington, I heartily recommend this novel. Copies of this work are available electronically, including at the following site: http://www.online-literature.com/tarkington/flirt/. However, nothing beats reading an old book in book form, and the 1913 hardback edition published by Grosset & Dunlap contains a number of original illustrations that portray events in the story. ( )