cover image The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt

Caroline Preston. HarperCollins/Ecco, $25.99 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-06-196690-3

The origin story behind this graphic novel–cum–scrapbook, the first illustrated work by Jackie by Josie novelist Preston, might be more interesting than the by-the-numbers tale of flappers and expatriates inside. Preston, once an archivist at Harvard’s Houghton Library, collected more than 600 pieces of original 1920s materiel from antique stores and eBay sellers—Sears catalogues, amusement park tickets, commemorative badges, even a box of seasickness pills. In handsome, full-color pages, the memorabilia tell the story of Frankie, an aspiring writer who leaves her poor New England family to travel to Vassar, then to New York, then to Paris, where she becomes tangled in a romance with an older publisher with ties to her past. Frankie’s Zelig-like ubiquity—of course she dates a man who works for the New Yorker at its launch, and of course in Paris she winds up editing James Joyce—makes for a nifty armchair tour of postwar literary culture, but the love stories at the book’s center remain unsurprising and unmoving. In the end, this “novel in pictures” is best appreciated for its fetishistic attention to period detail; even the captions were typed on a vintage 1915 Corona portable typewriter. (Nov.)