Laura Hobson

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Money Problems

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Last Updated August 6, 2024.

That money corrupts is a cliché dear to our hearts, and the [heroine of Laura Hobson's "Untold Millions" opposes] … that corruption in varying ways.

In "Untold Millions," Jossie Stone's lover, Rick Baird, can't resist the trappings of success even though he usually can't afford them….

This is Laura Hobson's ninth novel, and it's a pleasure to be in the hands of a pro. The narrative line is tight and steady, and Miss Hobson always tells us what we want to know just before we become aware that we want to know it. There is a sort of counterpoint of numbers—the $10 raise, the debt that dwindles from $70 to $60—which carries the theme on another level, and reminds us how tied our lives are to such music….

As Rick puts one book aside and begins another, amasses more debts and starts having affairs with other women (which he justifies with a Havelock Ellis-inspired philosophy), Jossie's blindness to Rick's faults becomes steadily more annoying. Finally she sees that she has collaborated in her own exploitation. If her realization comes in a rather obvious way, rather like the moral at the end of an Aesop's fable, it hardly detracts from an otherwise absorbing story. (p. 14)

Nora Johnson, "Money Problems," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1982 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), March 28, 1982, pp. 14, 29.∗

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Fiction: 'Untold Millions'