Booth Tarkington was especially skillful in depicting women. Keith J. Fennimore in his critical study of Tarkington's books comments that "as Henry James is said to have done, Tarkington looked at women rather as women look at them; women look at women as persons, men look at them as women." Alice Adams is his finest portrait of a woman. Alice fantasizes, lies, and uses every ploy her imagination can conceive to convince herself and others that she does not belong in the steadily deteriorating circumstances of her family life. She does have charm and a certain degree of wit, and she is basically a realist who now and then pulls herself up short, and asks herself, "Why am I telling these lies?" Her struggle to win the wealthy socialite, Arthur Russell, strains her tactical resources to the utmost, but the reader comes to admire the real Alice beneath...