He shows them as limited but honourable people who deal as best they can with a difficult situation. Gallico doesn’t sneer at Jerry’s family or background. Gallico is at heart a romantic and love prevails, but only after considerable turmoil. In his decision to marry Patches, Jerry has to overcome a huge weight of social pressure, not least from his own parents. Yet his entire mapped-out future is cast into jeopardy by the unplanned romance. Jerry’s background is rock solid – family, social class, career and fiancée. This throws his whole life into upheaval. Tells the story of Jerry, a young American pilot in World War Two who falls unexpectedly in love with Patches, an English girl. Here, as in other books, he draws together a range of characters and plot lines in a way one would not have suspected. Gallico evokes a sense of compassion for Mrs Harris and the other characters. In the wrong hands, this could be a corny, feelgood story which doesn’t ring true.

Her quest takes her on a roundabout route to the House of Dior in Paris. In a classic underdog tale, Mrs Harris is a poor, old, uneducated woman who dares to reach for something beyond her lowly social status. Mrs Harris, a London cleaning lady, pursues a lifelong dream to own a Dior dress. The 1972 film has real characters, but in the terrible 2006 version it was like watching cardboard cut-outs trying to escape the sunken ship. Oddly enough, this is shown in the two film versions of The Poseidon Adventure. The editor, Sol Stein, said of fiction writing that ‘we need to know the people in the car before we see the car crash.’ We need to care.

As a thriller, it’s a page turner, but the real story is about how each person behaves in crisis conditions. A group of survivors has to work their way out of the ship to reach safety. Wait, wasn’t that the movie that kicked off the ‘disaster film’ genre in the 1970s? Yes – well, Gallico wrote the original book.Ī freak storm at sea flips an ocean liner upside down. He wrote many novels and novellas – here are my top five: While he made no attempt to be highbrow, Gallico’s writing shows a compassion and understanding of human nature rarely found in other authors. Literary snobs tend to dismiss him as a popular author. His best works are dark romances which show how love survives despite harsh conditions. Paul Gallico was a 20th century American author.

Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico