Mildred Pierce

James M. Cain

Jan 2006 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Christine Williams

About this audiobook

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter.

Out of these elements, Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.

Ratings and reviews

Melodramatic Hollywood novel without a sympathy inducing character read overly loudly in that phony hollywood accent of the 1940s. Don't waste your money. Mildred is an absurd character doting on inexplicably evil overly dramatized child. She is also stupid in business and love. Men are caricatures. Husband is vapid. First boyfriend an empty shell who just disappears. Second boyfriend an evil Clark Gable. Scenes are Hollywood extremes and generate no emotional response in reader. Sex scenes are dull or even offensive ("I think it's time for the crime of rape."). Worst of all you can listen for hours expecting the novel to start moving somewhere. It does not.

About the author

One of the most celebrated and notorious crime writers of all time, JAMES M. CAIN launched his career with the publication of two back-to-back masterpieces—The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity—selling millions of copies worldwide and inspiring classic movies. Cain continued with an unmatched run of noir novels including Mildred Pierce which inspired both the Academy Award-winning film starring Joan Crawford and the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslet. Cain died in 1977.

Christine Williams is a singer and actor based in Ashland, Oregon. Her performance credits include productions at regional theaters and on concert stages across the country and around the world, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Barbican Centre in London to the Aspen Music Festival and the Grotowski Institute in Poland.