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 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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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