Honeymoon in Shanghai

"Maurice Dekobra was a French author, writing in the 1930s mostly, but much of his work has been translated into English. One book, Madonna of the Sleeping Cars , was a massive bestseller. Everybody read it, and it was referenced a lot. But then he was just forgotten. He wrote the most vividly evocative books about Paris and its demimonde areas—they’re really good fun as well. He is a very literary and fascinating writer in a populist way, and Honeymoon in Shanghai is one of his most interesting stories. He writes about a foreign woman with her young attractive daughter, stuck in Shanghai. She’s almost pimping her daughter out, trying to find her a boyfriend or suitors—not necessarily husbands, but people who will take her out and give the family some money so that they can survive. Emily Hahn wrote a similar novel called Miss Jill , about an American girl in Shanghai living off her wits, as they say. They used to talk of the “white flowers of the China coast”—women who weren’t quite prostitutes, but were not quite legitimate. Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express is the perfect embodiment of this. And it was real, it existed. See, I’m very sentimental; I cry at films and things like that. His kind of writing appeals to me, but if you’re more strict in your literary tastes, you might find him a bit flamboyant, maybe lightweight, a bit overly nostalgic. It casts back to the 1930s. The father is gone—dead, I think—and left no money to his daughter and wife, who are staying in a hotel in Shanghai. They have only got enough money to stay there for an extra couple of days. They have to survive on their wits, but they can’t do anything; they don’t have any skills and they don’t have any trades. They were fairly well-to-do, but fell on hard times. She’s not really willing to become a shop girl or a secretary or anything. So, she only has one way to make money; that is, to be pretty and attract men who will make a contribution. It’s a very entertaining book."