Rating: 
Summary: A Humour Standard
Review: 'Topper' is best known perhaps from the Cary Grant movie version. It's a good movie but I like the book even better. The characters delight, particularly in terms of Cosmo's retaining his decorum, in the warmth of Marion's dead-but-still-sexy presence. Anyone who enjoys humourous novels has to put this one on their reading list. Few recent humour novels are as funny as this classic from decades past, but there is one I know of, entitled 'Rastus Reilly', and I recommend that book as well.
Rating:
Summary: What man hasn't fallen in love with a ghost?
Review: Absolutely delightful. It's hard to believe that this was considered scandalous at the time--it certainly seems tame enough today. This modern era farce has a sweetness and innocence lacking in a post-modern era characterized by violence and overt sex. Note that Smith uses an interesting visual motif in this book that he did not use in "Gods". Keep your 'eyes' open for it.
Rating:
Summary: What man hasn't fallen in love with a ghost?
Review: Absolutely delightful. It's hard to believe that this was considered scandalous at the time--it certainly seems tame enough today. This modern era farce has a sweetness and innocence lacking in a post-modern era characterized by violence and overt sex. Note that Smith uses an interesting visual motif in this book that he did not use in "Gods". Keep your 'eyes' open for it.
Rating:
Summary: Great escapist fare from the jazz age
Review: Having never heard of the movie, my initial attraction to this book was actually the cover art. Though there really isn't a date given, I pictured it perhaps in the early 1920's, though the depiction of the automobile as some kind of strange novelty probably sets it in the early 1910's. Perhaps it's a reflection on myself, but I enjoy stories about ordinary people who are stuck in a rut or who have lived their lives having never followed their dreams and who are given one last chance to shine. The characters and antics are outrageous, yet likable in a strange way. And the story reads pretty quickly. While reading this book, I pictured elements of the 20's, 50's, and 80's. In fact, I think they should re-make a movie of this book and set it in a "timeless" setting. Overall, if you're not prejudiced against reading a book written in the 1920's, I'd recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Great escapist fare from the jazz age
Review: Having never heard of the movie, my initial attraction to this book was actually the cover art. Though there really isn't a date given, I pictured it perhaps in the early 1920's, though the depiction of the automobile as some kind of strange novelty probably sets it in the early 1910's. Perhaps it's a reflection on myself, but I enjoy stories about ordinary people who are stuck in a rut or who have lived their lives having never followed their dreams and who are given one last chance to shine. The characters and antics are outrageous, yet likable in a strange way. And the story reads pretty quickly. While reading this book, I pictured elements of the 20's, 50's, and 80's. In fact, I think they should re-make a movie of this book and set it in a "timeless" setting. Overall, if you're not prejudiced against reading a book written in the 1920's, I'd recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: 100% Enjoyable after 70 + years
Review: I have become such a fan of this man's works - and this is the one that started it all. You just don't find writers who have the knack Smith did at writing witty, urbane comedy with such grace and sophistication. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Madcap haunting
Review: I loved this book the first time I read it. This time it was less charming, though still fun. It all begins when Cosmo Topper, the epitome of Humdrum Life buys a car -- and discovers too late that it is haunted. Yes, haunted, and by outrageously adventuresome ghosts as well. Ghosts that drag poor Cosmo from one scrape to another and convert his Humdrum to Mayhem. Great Fun!
Rating:
Summary: On the Road with Thorne Smith
Review: Predating Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" by a couple of decades, Topper, believe it or not, explores some of the same territory - the American love of the open road, alcohol and a quest for the spiritual - albeit in a humorous, musical comedy sort of way. Topper is a rather pompous bank manager whose well organized (by his wife) life disolves into happy and hilarious anarchy when he buys a car haunted by the fun loving, and not a little sexy, ghosts of its former owners.
Rating:
Summary: The great Thorne Smith
Review: Still funny after all these years. It's a shame most of his stuff is out of print...
Rating:
Summary: High and Low Spirits
Review: The movie and TV versions of "Topper" have always emphasized the trick of ghosts appearing and disappearing... but the novel is really about Mr. Topper's love/hate relationship to middle-class conformity, and how he's drawn toward love and death. As with many of Smith's books, there's an undertow of sadness about how brief and unsatisfying life can be, and a true satirist's rage at hypocrisy and repression. Set in the same period as "The Great Gatsby," this is almost a companion piece -- another story about longing and belonging, fast driving and fast living, and dropouts living a very different life than those around them.
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