FREE THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS PDF James M. Cain | 288 pages | 22 Jul 2013 | Titan Books Ltd | 9781781160343 | English | London, United Kingdom Cocktail Waitress Jobs, Careers | Well now Both do struggle after loss, both do like to give a good slap when in tantrum mode, and my goodness, both do make some asinine mistakes. But Joan gives off an added vibe of suspicion, greed and sexuality Oh you trickster Cain! Don't be fooled folks. Everything is not as clean cut as it The Cocktail Waitress. What a clever, understated work of mystery-noir! I almost went for The Cocktail Waitress, and actually had to do some re-reading, but it was worth every minute of it. I think so Love this guy Cain and love finishing a book with a smile on my The Cocktail Waitress From what I understand, Cain didn't publish The Cocktail Waitress one bc he was unhappy with the various versions of the endings he wrote. Thought it interesting our wealthy character Earl had similar health issues as author. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Following her The Cocktail Waitress death in a suspicious The Cocktail Waitress accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell olde Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Cocktail WaitressThe Cocktail Waitress sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The Cocktail The Cocktail Waitress. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Cocktail Waitress. I have never read James M. Cain before despite noir being my favorite genre and the guy being one of the three classics of it. After finishing DNFing this book I postponed my further acquaintance with his works indefinitely. Joan Medford's drunkard husband died in a car accident kids, don't The Cocktail Waitress and drive: you might spill your drink. She now has one child to support and no money. So - oh horror of horrors - she had to find a job. I admit that at the time of the book was written a working woman was not a common sight, but these days women work alongside men and often do equally good or better jobs and achieving equally good or better results. None of them consider their work to be a tragedy, so sorry Joan Medford, I fail to feel much sympathy for you. She came to work in a bar and two regulars madly fall in love with her. One of old, kinda ugly-looking but rich, and another is young, charismatic, and broke. What is poor girl to do? Why, she would become a gold digger! The Cocktail Waitress looked nice and dandy, but there was one tiny little cloud in otherwise bright future for our heroine: one of the pesky police detectives refused to believe her late husband's death was an accident. Where do I start with my criticism? Joan was the only flashed out character in the whole story. Initially I felt bad for her because of her child, but the more I read the less I cared. Even before the story started she showed poor judgement by getting married an alcoholic jerk. The fate favored her and the guy was out of the picture. Joan's next act? She made almost exactly the same mistake. In case the readers still did not get it by that time, she made yet another big mistake. I really truly do not get The Cocktail Waitress. One moment she is a ruthless cold- blooded femme fatale. Another moment she makes a log looks like Einstein compared to her. All other characters only existed to push the story forward. Speaking about the story it was so predictable it was not even funny. After I quit reading I looked through the rest of the pages so strictly speaking it was not a DNF The Cocktail Waitress I kept turning the remaining pages - one after another to The Cocktail Waitress that indeed the developments I predicted from the first page indeed happened. It was also slow-moving and boring. To be honest this type of noir literature which I call domestic noir for the lack of a better term is my least favorite type. This influenced my opinion and for this reason I rated this DNF read with 2 stars as opposed to 1. In case you like the literature where all the dirty cloths are kept strictly within families you might like it. I saw and still see too much of this in real life, thank you very much. View all 17 comments. Dec 20, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves:noirThe Cocktail Waitresshard-case-crime. Desperate for cash Joan takes a gig as a scantily clad The Cocktail Waitress waitress in a lounge where her looks draw the attention of plenty of male customers including the rich but sickly Earl K. White who starts dropping huge tips on her. When she gets into the relationship with White it The Cocktail Waitress like a classic gold digger scenario. Is she an unreliable narrator who has been feeding the reader a line the entire time? Are we just as big of suckers as the rubes that Joan works for tips? Or is it really just a string of bad luck that is making Joan look bad, and she is just trying to set the record straight as she claims? View The Cocktail Waitress 4 comments. Jan 16, Algernon Darth Anyan rated it liked it Shelves: My review borrows heavily from the afterword by Charles Ardai, the editor who put in the hard work of tracking the manuscript and of collating the several versions of the unpublished story. Adair is a big fan of Cain, yet even he The Cocktail Waitress the need to make a couple of critical observations regarding this final cap to a long and uneven career. The first comment concerns the familiarity of the The Cocktail Waitress. After trying to branch out into several different genres and styles, Cain returned to the noir sensibilities that first got him noticed and produced at least three masterpieces, novels that The Cocktail Waitress turn became memorable The Cocktail Waitress. But, in doing so, Cain cannibalizes his own recipe for success, rewriting and mixing the storylines of those same three early novels: From Postman and Double Indemnity there's the idea of a young, attractive woman, married to an unattractive but The Cocktail Waitress older man, who meets a new man, young and handsome, who's ultimately implicated in the husband's death. From Mildred Pierce he took the premise of a female protagonist in severe economic straits, just getting out of a bad marriage, who has taken a degrading job as a waitress in order to provide for her child. The second editorial comment acknowledges the so-called 'trashy' side of life that seemes to fascinate Cain and to dominate his literary output, mostly unsavoury explorations of the darkest corners The Cocktail Waitress the human psyche. Cain wasn't into pleasant, witty repartees among the upper echelon of society and least of all into happy endings. The Cocktail Waitress writes mostly about bottom feeders, opportunists and selfish bastards that will eventually be brought down by their own vices. Cain's characters sweat, and have reason to. And when you read The Cocktail Waitress them, he makes you sweat alongside them. You want to know what it feels like to be trapped in a loveless marriage, yearning hopelessly for something better The Cocktail Waitress grabbing desperately at a way out even if it's cruel and repellent and doomed? If you feel you need a shower afterwards, that's to its credit, not a criticism. I wish I could subscribe fully to this last statement, about the merit of taking a trip into the gutter and learning some valuable lessons along The Cocktail Waitress way, but the actual experience of reading Joan Medford's account of how The Cocktail Waitress became notorious as a The Cocktail Waitress Widow is best described as a chore for me. It is difficult to explain why without giving away the plot, but let me say that I have read many books written from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, yet in Joan Medford The Cocktail Waitress experienced the widest distance between the words and the actions of a character. Cocktail Waitress Duties & Responsibilities | Work - Account Options Sign in. Top charts. New arrivals. Spradley Brenda E. Mann Feb A classic, this highly readable, in-depth study examines a familiar female role in contemporary American society.