A witty and meticulously researched treat for devotees of old Hollywood.
An Oklahoma teenager arrives in Hollywood and enters a glamorous world thanks to her famous cousin in this historical novel set in the 1930s and based on a true story.
Helen Nichols is a pretty, intelligent high school student in Oklahoma. Her early life is marked by tragedy. At 10 months old, Helen and her mother and sister, Jean, are injured in a gas explosion that kills her father. Helen is also run over by a truck as a child. The Nichols sisters and their cousin Ginger Rogers live with their grandparents while Helen’s mother and Aunt Lela establish themselves in careers and remarry. Lela, the first female Marine sergeant, has written and produced military training films but devotes her energy to promoting the career of her only child, Ginger. In her early 20s, Ginger is a rising star, navigating the studio contract system with the help of her indefatigable “momager.” Lela and Ginger are convinced that Helen has the looks to land an RKO contract. With a new name, Phyllis Fraser, and financial support from her aunt and cousin, she moves to Hollywood. Although she lacks Ginger’s exceptional talent, Phyllis is offered a bit part and enjoys limited success in various films. Living with Ginger and Lela, Phyllis meets notable neighbors, including Harpo Marx and Clara Bow. When Phyllis and her relatives attend a play starring newcomer Humphrey Bogart, Lela comments: “Terrible name. He should change it.” There are many intriguing historical facts in Porter’s well-researched book. Author Ayn Rand was a wardrobe assistant for many mediocre films. When Ginger Rogers read that Adele Astaire was moving to Ireland and leaving her brother without his dance partner, she cried: “What on earth will Fred do without her?” The entertaining novel details a succession of trysts and marriages among the young actresses. Ultimately disheartened, Phyllis decides to devote herself to writing, which brings her to New York and into the orbit of New Yorker editor Harold Ross and his close friend Random House editor Bennett Cerf. She soon marries Cerf, who is twice her age. More compelling than the litany of stars, wannabes, and their mostly forgettable films is the section devoted to Phyllis’ life in New York, her work on Madison Avenue, and her unusual “hot desk” arrangement there with Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
A witty and meticulously researched treat for devotees of old Hollywood.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9907420-1-2
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Gallica Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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