An engrossing tale of a fictional star’s memoir and her puzzling fate.
In this historical mystery, a Hollywood screenwriter digs into the past of a relative—a silent-era movie star whose disappearance nearly a century ago remains unexplained.
In 2014, writer Elliott Farr, who’s still fairly new to Hollywood, agrees to research early, influential personalities of the silver screen for a film producer. He quickly zeroes in on Catherine Farr, his great-great-aunt, a movie actress who was famous in the 1910s, when many filmmakers were producing pictures in Chicago. Catherine’s life is a mystery; she vanished in 1920, and her lover, movie director Toby Swanney, claimed that he killed her accidentally. But authorities never found a body or officially charged Swanney, who later recanted. Catherine was a striking actress who first appeared onscreen in 1912, and she quickly proved to be an inspired writer and director as well. She constantly challenged people with her movies, tackling such topical issues as women’s suffrage and racism in America. But although Catherine monetarily supported her family, who lived on a Palatine, Illinois, farm, she and her “judgmental and envious” Uncle Aran often clashed. While investigating his ancestor’s fate, Elliott finds a few surprises, including a woman who died in the late 1950s who may have been Catherine, though using an alias. Smith’s tale oscillates between various moments in Catherine’s life and Elliott’s present. Much of Catherine’s story resembles a formal, generally neutral biography, often simply detailing plots of her extensive filmography. However, as the narrative progresses and Catherine’s work becomes more political, Smith, the author of Robert E. Howard (2018), effectively and appropriately dramatizes the struggles that she faces, both as a woman and as a filmmaker. The early-20th-century time period is particularly vivid in its historical details, which include real-life films and stars as well as a reference to the 1918 influenza pandemic. The mystery, meanwhile, is sound, particularly in the novel’s latter half, which offers readers more than one well-earned shock.
An engrossing tale of a fictional star’s memoir and her puzzling fate.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68390-240-9
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Pulp Hero Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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