VAL LEWTON – No Bed of Her Own.  Vanguard Press, hardcover, 1932. Novel Library #39, paperback, 194?. Kingly Reprieve, UK, softcover, 2006. Filmed as  No Man of Her Own starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in 1932.

   Rose Mahoney is a single, good-looking stenographer in NYC in the early 1930’s.

   Then the Depression hits. She gets laid off, can’t find another job, loses her apartment, and has nowhere to go.

   She couch-surfs with some girlfriends that dance at the dancing halls, supplementing their income by letting ardent dancing partners take them home.

   And then, after a couple of years of this, sleeping around, eating when she can, relying on the kindness of strangers, the depression ends and she finds a new job.

   The End. But for the last chapter.

   Pretty boring stuff. And light. She never really suffers, and her sexual escapades are never described except in the most conclusory, non-descriptive ways. She never goes particularly hungry, never has to sleep on the streets, never streetwalks. It’s really not all that bad. And everyone she meets is kind and helpful in a Leave It to Beaver kind of way. No one takes advantage of her, and anyone who tries she’s able to easily fight off if she’s not in the mood.

   So yeah. Really tame stuff. Not much of a dramatic arc whatsoever.

   Then the last chapter comes. Pretty much out of nowhere. It’s like someone read the book and criticized it for being too positive and happy. So Lewton pulls the rug out from us, introducing a horrific tragedy from out of nowhere. It’s a deus ex machina in reverse. Everything was ending swimmingly, so tragedy is thrown onto the stage at the last second to save us from a happy ending.

   It’s really bizarre. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it before. I’ve dreamt that someday someone would make a light, by-the-numbers romantic comedy and about an hour into the movie, one of the leads suddenly dies of a heart attack in a car-jacking or something. This novel is kind of like that.

   And frankly, the bizarre ending, where defeat is wrenched from the jaws of victory at the very last second, is the only thing that makes this novel even marginally worth reading. The book got on my radar as a result of appearing on a top ten noir list. But it in no way deserves to be there.

   Lewton says: “Years ago I wrote novels for a living, and when RKO was looking for producers, someone told them I had written horrible novels. They misunderstood the word ‘horrible’ for ‘horror’ and I got the job….” Lewton, of course, is famous for his horror films: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim, Curse of the Cat People, The Leopard Man, Isle of the Dead, Bedlam, The Body Snatcher, The Ghost Ship, among others.

   Before I read the book I figured he was joking. Guess not.