The Beautiful and Damned

Anthony Patch has a comfortable allowance, an elegant apartment and a vague plan to write a history book someday. His grandfather, a wealthy and puritanical crusader against vice, intends to leave him millions, and Anthony assumes he will simply wait for the inheritance. Through his friend Richard Caramel, an aspiring novelist, he meets Gloria Gilbert, a beautiful and willful young woman who loves admiration and fears growing old.

Their courtship is intense and glamorous, and their marriage begins in a whirl of cocktails, parties and a rented gray house in the country, where friends gather for long weekends. But Anthony drifts without purpose, Gloria grows restless, and their money runs low as they drink more and quarrel more. When a disastrous scene ruins their relationship with the grandfather, everything depends on what he leaves them. During the war Anthony is sent to an army camp in the South, where loneliness and a brief affair complicate matters further, while Gloria dreams of a film career. The novel follows them through the long, uncertain wait.

Witty in places but increasingly bittersweet. About 400 pages in the Signet Classics edition.