An epic industry novel about the making of a Hollywood classic.
In Matzen’s novel, a tenacious executive works behind the scenes, determined that she’ll make the greatest movie of all time.
Irene Lee heads the story department at Warner Bros., reading through the insurmountable pile of scripts sitting atop her desk. It’s not easy being the only female executive at the studio, especially in 1941, when Hollywood is beholden to the delicate egos of male studio heads. Irene is looking for a hit to prove her merit, and she thinks she may have found one in a play with the unassuming title Everybody Comes to Rick’s. “She couldn’t say it was all that good…But this play had power. It kept her attention from beginning to end and she found something compelling in the character of a cynical American hiding out in a Casablanca nightclub—tingles-along-the-spine, ringing-in-her-ears compelling.” Irene talks her boss, Hal Wallis, into hiring a famous (and famously difficult) screenwriting duo, brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, to turn the play into a script. Together, the three of them start to draft a script that Irene thinks may lead to her holy grail: the perfect movie. As America teeters on the edge of world war, the only problem will be getting the rest of the execs at Warner Bros. to share in her vision. In addition to political concerns and issues of censorship, Irene must navigate the tumultuous personalities that define Hollywood in its Golden Era, people like the dictatorial studio head Jack Warner, who rules his domain like a vengeful deity; Michael Curtiz, the brusque Hungarian director who hates dialogue; and Ingrid Bergman, the towering Swedish actress who’s recently forsaken the movies to live as a housewife in Rochester, New York. It’s a job that will push Irene to the limits of her wits—but hey, that’s show biz.
The novel is a loving homage to 1940s cinema, and Matzen excels in capturing the slang and speech rhythms of the day (or, at least, of the movies from that era). The humor, too, feels of that time, as when Jack Warner considers an actress for a role: “He had no problem hiring Claire Trevor, who was a fine actress and a babe. In fact, he’d bang her in a minute. No, wait; he did bang her in a minute, Warner remembered…But that was neither here nor there, and Ann didn’t need to know anything about Claire Trevor. Who Jack nailed was none of his wife’s business.” The plot is intricately tied up with the film Casablanca, so much so that anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with the movie may have trouble feeling completely invested, given the book’s nearly 500-page length. For those who know and love the film, however, Matzen has crafted an impressive dramatization of its birth, centering the work of the real-life Irene Lee (nee Levine). Readers will marvel at how much filmmaking has changed in the last 80 years—and how much it hasn’t.
An epic industry novel about the making of a Hollywood classic.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781735273877
Page Count: 486
Publisher: GoodKnight Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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