It is a roman à clef loosely based upon the life of socialite and flapper Starr Faithfull, whose unsolved death in 1931 became a tabloid sensation.
The novel explores the life of Gloria Wandrous, a young woman having an affair with Weston Liggett, an older, married businessman.
Set in New York circa 1931, it fills in her family background and sexual history, and it locates her within a circle of friends, their relationships, and economic struggles, providing a closely observed tour of "the sordid and sensational lives of people on the fringe of café society and the underworld".
[4] The minor character of Jimmy Malloy, a junior newspaper reporter, serves as O'Hara’s alter ego; he has the style of a Yale University graduate but not the means.
[8] When Random House republished the novel in 1995, Margo Jefferson criticized its prose but wrote that O'Hara was "full of passion and honest spleen, driven to show why we live and act the way we do.
The comedy of it and the meanness, the social climbing and the downward plunges, the tricky business of balancing your ethnic debits against your physical or financial assets.
[5] He noted that the novel remains fresh in presenting a wide range of sexual behaviors from the point of view of a woman and also allowing her an intense friendship–love on his part–with a male peer, commercial illustrator Eddie Brunner.