A novel that transcends concept with its human touches.
A fictionalized telling of the troubled life and storied film career of Rita Hayworth and her marriage to Orson Welles, as seen through the eyes of a sympathetic outsider.
Film-smart and street-smart—if that street happens to be Hollywood Boulevard—the made-up witness, Rusty Redburn, is an Illinois farm girl who dropped out of college to test her fortunes in Tinseltown. She gets a job with Columbia Pictures' publicity department digging up dirt on celebrities. She's so good at it that she's hired by repugnant Columbia head Harry Cohn to spy on the uncontrollable Welles and his wife, Hayworth, whom Cohn lusts after. In her guise as Hayworth's gal Friday, Redburn, a lesbian, comes to care for the actress, whose "crippling fear of her own unworthiness" can be traced back to abuse by her father, her childhood dance partner. But though Redburn idolizes Welles for Citizen Kane, she quickly discovers he's better at acting the role of charmer than actually caring for anyone, including Hayworth, as much as himself—and is physically clumsy to boot. Tracing Hayworth's sad decline through films including Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady From Shanghai, the novel has a good time with cutthroat gossip columnists; the ego-driven female film editor who chopped Lady; and crass hustlers including Eddie Judson, Hayworth's first husband, who altered film history by having her hairline raised and the color of her hair changed to her trademark fiery red. Redburn, a serious film buff who writes mimeographed movie reviews as Regina X, is a nifty invention, allowing Charyn the novelist to play Charyn the critic. Hayworth "sang" with her every movement, “in the shake of a shoulder, in the jig of her leg.” Kane was "a sarabande of moments." The veteran author's charm and easy sense of irony further lift this surprisingly affecting book.
A novel that transcends concept with its human touches.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-09133-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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