Resumen
Resumen de El ratón verde
Para quién es
Readers who enjoy screwball romance, quick dialogue and farce built on an inventive premise will love it, as will anyone curious about love, luck and early wireless science, and anyone who likes a lively family of sisters.
De qué trata este libro
The Green Mouse is a comic romance by the American author Robert W. Chambers, who died in 1933. It is a light, quick piece of fun set in New York and on Long Island, in the years when invisible wireless waves seemed able to carry almost anything. Its idea is simple and silly. What if a clever young inventor could find the one person each of us is destined to marry, and what if a rich family put its fortune into selling that service?
Along the way you meet a ruined young magician, a bellowing father with a monocle, and five sisters who each meet their fate in the most awkward way. There is a stuck elevator, a runaway cat, a bucket of wallpaper paste and a mermaid on a rock. The book gives you warm farce, sparkling talk and a gentle joke at the expense of anyone who thinks love can be arranged by machine. We begin where the machine itself begins, with a young man at the very bottom of his luck.
En este resumen
- 1A ruined gentleman builds a machine for fateFree
- 2A stuck elevator catches Sacharissa's heart
- 3Brown follows a girl and a gray cat
- 4Paste, pranks and a prancing father
- 5Fate, choice and the business of love
- 6A chain of comic scenes with a wink
Idea clave 1 de 6
A ruined gentleman builds a machine for fate
The story opens with a young man whose fortune has suddenly gone. A financial collapse has swept away the wealth he expected to enjoy for life, and every creditor is paid before he can ask what comes next. He has studied at Harvard and in Europe, yet he has never earned a penny. His only asset is a gift for conjuring and a strange, calming power over animals.
He rents rooms on Central Park West and practises behind closed doors, with cats that shrink into kittens and mice of every colour. One May afternoon a black horse thunders down a bridle path with a young woman hanging on, and he stops it with a touch and a whisper. She is a painter who comes to the studio next door and has always looked through him in the hall. She thanks him and gallops away.
Weeks later he has his first booking, and he rehearses in terror. Then the painter knocks, pale and shaking, to ask whether a pea green mouse can possibly exist. He lets her believe the worst for far too long before a line of coloured mice marches out of the wall. She is Ethelinda Carr, she does not care that he is poor, and her father, Bushwyck Carr, bounces up the stairs in a rage. The young man, William Augustus Destyn, whispers his secret into the father's ear.
After the wedding trip, Destyn explains his secret to the family. The earth is wrapped in psychic currents, he says, and each current joins two people who were made for each other. His machine looks like the inside of a watch, and a hair thin wire uncurls and glows blue when it finds the partner. Eldest sister Sacharissa laughs, but she agrees to a blindfold test, marking a name in the Social Register with a pencil. The pencil lands on her own name, she keeps her word, and the blue light flares.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about El ratón verde
What is The Green Mouse about?
It is a comic romance about a young inventor, William Destyn, whose machine claims to find each person's destined partner. His wife's family invests in it, and the Carr sisters are caught in funny situations as the blue spark finds them.
What does the green mouse mean in the book?
The green mouse first appears as a dyed pet in Destyn's magic act, which startles a young woman. It then becomes the name of the company, Green Mouse, Limited, and the little emblem on its calling cards.
How does the love machine work?
Destyn says the earth is wrapped in psychic currents, each linking two destined people. His clockwork device collects a person's waves, and a thin wire of Rosium glows blue at the tip when it finds the partner.
Is The Green Mouse a true story?
No, it is pure fiction, a farce written by Robert W. Chambers in the early twentieth century. The invisible waves, the machine and the company are playful inventions, though the New York and Long Island settings are real places.
Is The Green Mouse easy to read?
It is very approachable. The chapters are short, the dialogue is quick and funny, and each section is a self-contained comic scene with a clear goal, so the story is easy to follow and enjoy.