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    The Operator: A Novel
    The Operator: A Novel
    The Operator: A Novel
    Ebook383 pages5 hours

    The Operator: A Novel

    By Gretchen Berg

    3.5/5

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    "What if you could listen in on any phone conversation in town? With great humor and insight, The Operator by Gretchen Berg delivers a vivid look inside the heads and hearts of a group of housewives and pokes at the absurdities of 1950s America, a simpler time that was far from simple. Think The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in the suburbs with delicious turns of jealousy, infidelity, bigotry, and embezzlement thrown in for good measure. The Operator is irresistible!" —Kathryn Stockett, author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Help

    A clever, surprising, and ultimately moving debut novel, set in a small Midwestern town in the early 1950s, about a nosy switchboard operator who overhears gossip involving her own family, and the unraveling that discovery sets into motion.

    In a small town, everyone knows everyone else’s business . . .

    Nobody knows the people of Wooster, Ohio, better than switchboard operator Vivian Dalton, and she’d be the first to tell you that. She calls it intuition. Her teenage daughter, Charlotte, calls it eavesdropping.

    Vivian and the other women who work at Bell on East Liberty Street connect lines and lives. They aren’t supposed to listen in on conversations, but they do, and they all have opinions on what they hear—especially Vivian. She knows that Mrs. Butler’s ungrateful daughter, Maxine, still hasn’t thanked her mother for the quilt she made, and that Ginny Frazier turned down yet another invitation to go to the A&W with Clyde Walsh.

    Then, one cold December night, Vivian listens in on a call between that snob Betty Miller and someone whose voice she can’t quite place and hears something shocking. Betty Miller’s mystery friend has news that, if true, will shatter Vivian’s tidy life in Wooster, humiliating her and making her the laughingstock of the town.

    Vivian may be mortified, but she isn’t going to take this lying down. She’s going to get to the bottom of that rumor—get into it, get under it, poke around in the corners. Find every last bit. Vivian wants the truth, no matter how painful it may be.

    But as Vivian is about to be reminded, in a small town like Wooster, one secret usually leads to another. . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 10, 2020
    ISBN9780062917201
    Author

    Gretchen Berg

    Gretchen Berg was born on the East Coast, raised in the Midwest, and spent a number of years in the Pacific Northwest. She has taught English in South Korea and in Northern Iraq and has traveled to all the other continents. A graduate of Iowa State University, she lives in Chicago, Illinois. The Operator is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Operator

    3.5/5

    81 ratings13 reviews

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    • 2/5
      With all do respect to the author, this book was clearly not my cup of tea.
    • 4/5
      Gretchen Berg is much too young to remember the 1950s, yet she captures middle America of that era with great skill in “The Operator” (2020). She also nicely describes Wooster, Ohio, a town I know well and where I have spent a lot of time over the years.Berg's story begins just a few days before Christmas in 1952 when Vivian, a telephone operator in Wooster who sometimes listens to other people's conversations, overhears gossip that turns over her world. Betty Miller, daughter of Wooster's mayor and a woman who prides herself as being the most prominent and most fashionable woman in town, learns in a call that Edward Dalton, Vivian's husband, has another wife in another state.Rather than just confronting Edward, Vivian stews and plots and snoops. She even hires a private investigator to track down the other woman in New York State, then tracks her down herself. When she and Edward remarry in a civil ceremony just to make sure they are legally married, you may think the story should be over, but it is just beginning. There are more revelations and more surprises to come.Strangely Edward turns out to be the most sympathetic character in the novel, with the possible exception of their teenage daughter Charlotte. But then he is the only key character into whose mind Berg does not take us. He is portrayed just as a hapless man trying to swim through his troubles while making minimum waves. It's the women, especially Vivian and Betty, who are shown as petty, spiteful and vain.Berg's novel, which includes a bank embezzlement subplot, is loosely based on a true story.All readers will find this novel fascinating. Those of us old enough to remember the time of telephone operators and party lines will find it sobering.
    • 3/5
      Small town life in the mid-20th century seen through the eyes of a telephone operator -- gossip, secrets, and scandal.
    • 4/5
      Slow to start, and set in my least favourite era - 1950s America - I must admit to believing the negative reviews, which is ironic considering the subject. But when I got to 'know' the characters, and found myself hooked by the twists and turns in the narrative, I couldn't stop reading - on one of the hottest days of the year, I lost myself in midwinter Ohio!“They’re always passing judgment on what you wear, what you eat, what you do, who you love.” Flora shrugged. “And if you’re smart enough to keep your distance, you can sit back and watch them the same way. Just enjoy it all, like you’d enjoy a stage play or a movie.”Based on the author's own family history, Vivian Dalton is a telephone operator in a small town in Ohio. A middle child who never finished high school, Vivian has long gained power through eavesdropping and can't help listening in to the calls she connects at work. Her technique backfires spectacularly, however, when she overhears a shocking rumour about her own husband. And the receiver of this devastating gossip is none other than Vivian's nemesis and the mayor's daughter, Betty Miller. Both women are ridiculous in their arrogance and judgement of others, particularly as both are housewives with small minds and vicious tongues. Vivian goes into meltdown, terrifying her teenage daughter, until she discovers a weapon she can use to get revenge - but will she?Vivian and Betty's petty rivalry bored me silly until Vivian lost control and started to fight back, then I found myself completely in her corner. 1950s wives and mothers living in claustrophobic communities didn't really have a great deal of choice in life, as Vivian observes, and petty jealousies started out of boredom could be blown out of proportion. If Vivian let herself think about it for too long, she’d work herself up into a lather about how unfair it was, and how women ended up trapped in their marriages with mouths to feed, and how there was no chance of them ever getting out of that, and the next thing you know she’d be waving a sign or wearing a pair of trousers.The hidden secrets that are revealed are perhaps a little obvious but I enjoyed the rigid rules of 1950s society being thrown into chaos! Vivian is the true star of the of the story, with her addiction to learning new words and frustrated habit of screaming into cushions. When she stops being a frustrated housewife and turns amateur investigator, I loved her all the more. Recommended for fellow lovers of character-driven stories.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting look at small town life in Wooster, Ohio in the 1950s where image and social status trump kindness and caring. It is also a town divided by socio-economics and ethnicities. At the center of the story is Vivian Dalton, who works as a switchboard operator long before cell phones and landlines. She immerses herself in the business of the citizens of Wooster by listening in to their conversations until she overhears her own family secret revealed that sets her reeling and filled with an all-consuming rage. A scandal of far-reaching proportions is discovered when two bank employees embezzle $250,000 from the community bank, and abscond. While investigating her own family scandal, Vivian unearths information that threatens to destroy her most bitter enemy, Betty Miller, who considers herself the guardian of acceptable social mores. There are multiple layers of secrets in this well-written debut novel.
    • 3/5
      This novel was before my time, but as a child, I remember my mom cursing about the nosey operators who listen in and new her business! Ours was not a big town about fifty thousand and she remember a box on the wall with a four party line, and a dial and a crank I thought that Vivian Dalton was crazy when she bought and expensive hat that her friend drooled over instead of buying proper footwear for her feet as she walked to work in the snow, especially in Ohio winters! Then she listens in on a call to snobbish, Betty Miller and her friend has news that will shatter her life if it was true!
    • 3/5
      Spent too much time trying to keep straight who everyone was and what was going on to enjoy the story.
    • 4/5
      Hands down one of THE best books I've read this year! It's a book of simpler times, yet with a theme that never gets old...marriage, deception and family.The story centers around Viv- an operator for Bell who "knows people" , who has her fingers on the pulse of town life by connecting and then listening in on phone conversations! Two thumbs up and 5 stars.
    • 5/5
      Secrets are like weeds: eventually they come to the surface and spread. Secrets abound in this small town, and, in the 1950s, telephone operators were privy to many of them. Vivian dropped out of school to go to work and help out her family during the depression years. She married, moved away from her home town, had a daughter, moved back, and returned to her old job and to life in a small town. But secrets and the scandals attached to them worked their way into the light of day and into the newspapers. And then everyone knew. How all this happened, who it affected, who was involved, and how it all turned out makes for some highly entertaining reading. With a well thought-out style of writing, author Gretchen Berg has penned a delightful tale of a small town ripe with gossipy women, unfaithful men, jealous sisters, pompous acquaintances, and more. Of course, not everyone was like that, but enough of the people were, which gave them all something to talk about - and hide. The characters are practically alive on the page, and the author’s style of writing in slowly doling out first the secrets and then the reasons behind them was a stroke of genius. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      The Operator by Gretchen Berg is a lighthearted historical novel about gossip, eavesdropping and scandal. Vivian Dalton works as a telephone operator at Ohio Bell. She began eavesdropping on conversations at an earlier age and working at the telephone company allowed her to continue this hobby. Late one December evening, Vivian overhears a conversation between the hoity toity Betty Miller and a stranger. The stranger tells Betty a secret about Vivian’s family which, if it gets out, will embarrass Vivian. After getting over her anger, Vivian sets out to learn if the information is accurate. While the story plays out in the present, we get to learn about Vivian’s growing up years and her relationship with her family. We also learn about Betty Miller’s family and the robbery of the bank managed by Betty’s father, J. Ellis Reed. This side story does not make sense until the end of the book. I had a hard time getting into The Operator. The first chapter did not pull me in (it was a turn off). I found The Operator easier to read as I got further into the story. I also think I had trouble because it is hard to like the main character (or any of them for that matter). I felt the author captured the time period with the fashions, vehicles, the language, and events. I like how Gretchen Berg included Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds’ Martian invasion broadcast. She captured the panic it created beautifully. I did feel The Operator was too long. It could have benefited from some judicious editing. This is Gretchen Berg’s debut novel which is loosely based on her grandmother (author’s note at end explains about newspaper articles and poems included). There are some recipes included in The Operator. The Operator is a blithe story about rampant rumormongering, endless eavesdropping, superior standards, and harmful hearsay.
    • 2/5
      I had been looking forward to reading The Operator, expecting something light, and quirky, perhaps with a bit of an edge, in a wholesome 1950’s small town setting. That’s not really what this is though. The Operator is satire, exploring the darker side of small town life that lurks beneath the veneer of respectability.I struggled with The Operator, in large part because I didn’t much care much for the characters. The residents of Wooster, Ohio, or at least those with whom we spend the most time, Vivian and Betty, are mainly unpleasant, perpetually unsatisfied, small-minded women whose flaws are their own undoing. Vivian’s lifelong habit of eavesdropping, which she indulges freely as a telephone operator, proves the old adage, “eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves”, true. While Betty, a spiteful, snob is ripe to learn, “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. Though I found the pacing a little slow and disjointed through the first half, the story has its moments as Vivian digs into the secrets being kept from her, exposing scandals far more serious than who has answered the door without makeup on, including premarital pregnancy, adultery, robbery, bigamy, and desertion.Of additional interest, the author’s note reveals the story is loosely based on her own grandmother’s life and as such some elements of the story are rooted in fact, including the misspelled recipes, poems, and a news article.I didn’t particularly enjoy The Operator, though I didn’t particularly dislike it either, it just wasn’t for me. It may be just what your looking for though.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed Gretchen Berg's debut novel.Broadly speaking, there are two timelines.The "past"begins in 1925 and familiarizes us with theMcGinity family, in particular three daughters, Vera, Vivian and Violet.Looking at them carefully, we see the stage is set for their futures.The "present" begins early Dec 1952 in Wooster Ohio and Bell telephone operator, Vivian Dalton eavesdrops and hears a piece of gossip that shakes the foundations of her simple life.The condescending Betty Miller is given a scandalous tidbit from a voice Vivian cannot place.If true, Vivian's personal and family life could be shattered.I found the characters as well as the settings easily visualized.There were many dimensions to the plot and all were successfully resolved....a fast moving, entertaining read....
    • 1/5
      In 1950s Wooster, Ohio, two rivals, Vivian and Betty, are engaging in a game of gossipy one-upmanship that begins when Vivian, a switchboard operator for Dell, eavesdrops on one of Betty's phone calls. While Vivian is poor and Betty is rich, these antagonists have more in common than they think: they were both raised by overbearing, critical mothers and both have deep insecurities. The gossip showdown upends the delicate social structure of the town.Titanic shifts in small-town life ought to be intriguing. I was bored by these bored housewives, bored by the "shocking" revelations, and bemused by the abrupt insertions of recipes and snippets of nursery rhymes (which Vivian gets wrong). Betty is evil, and Vivian is a moron. Both are annoying. I had no sympathy with either of them, even though I assume that since Vivian is based on the author's grandmother, I was supposed to be rooting for her. All of the rest of the characters are completely flat. Descriptions of people and places are either absent or ineffective; I got no particular small town, warm-and-fuzzy vibe even though it was Christmas. I have no idea why Vivian's boots reappear over and over, crunching in the snow, or why her purchase of a hat is so significant. In one story line, the scene changes from Ohio to Canada to meet another completely dull set of characters. No spoilers, but the Canadian group had every imaginable reason to be interesting and they were not. At the very least, they might have been used as comic relief.The author seemed to be trying to decide whether she was writing a mystery, a cozy, chick lit, or literary fiction and managed to write none of the above.I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher and was encouraged to write a review.

    Book preview

    The Operator - Gretchen Berg

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