Glamorous Notions by Megan Chance

March 27, 2025

Glamorous Notions by Megan Chance

Elsie Gruner escaped her family’s hog farm in rural Ohio by eloping with an aspiring actor. They travel across the country to Hollywood, earning money by hustling players at pool halls. When they arrive in Hollywood, Elsie takes a job in a cafe while her husband Walt struggles to break into the movies. But Walt is just a hustler, a mediocre actor who only gets small parts. Elsie dreams of being a dress designer and she gets her chance  when she wins an internship to an American art school in Rome. But Elsie is soon swept up in a dangerous game that threatens to end her budding career almost before it starts.

The 1950s are one of my least favorite eras to read about, because of the paranoia, the persecution, and the super-rigid morality. Anyone who wasn’t mainstream was wrong - if you associated with anyone who had subversive views, your job and your future could be in serious trouble. Gossip could ruin your life. Elsie/Lena, the main character, is extremely naive and is caught up first by a con man and later by a spy ring. A little too much description of costumes and studio in-fighting and name dropping, which made the narrative drag. Disappointing, not as good as the author’s earlier books. 

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Film studio circa 1950

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

January 31, 2025

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

While ruminating on a recent case that seems too neat, private investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by a nasty millionaire to find (or maybe not find) his missing daughter.

So 1930s! So noir! So fun! This has all the hallmarks of traditional noir: a hard boiled detective who lives by his own code of honor, perpetually short of cash and down on his luck, a job he knows he shouldn't take, women that he should walk away from (or better yet, run), the gritty underbelly of the big city, plenty of wisecracks and slang. But most notably, without the misogyny found in noir mysteries of the Golden Age, probably because the author is female. Who doesn't love a good noir story? Even Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: the Next Generation fantasized about being a noir private eye. Scott Brick narrates the audiobook - I could listen to him read the phone book. Recommended for fans of noir mysteries.

The noir detective at his gritty best

Miss del Rio by Barbara Mujica

June 4, 2024

Miss del Rio by Barbara Mujica

Dolores del Rio was one of the first Latina movie stars. Beautiful and elegant, she was a star in both Hollywood and Mexico. This fictional biography follows her life from her childhood in Durango, Mexico, through her rapid rise in Hollywood as a silent film star, told from the viewpoint of her childhood friend and hair stylist Mara. She made the successful transition to sound films and along with Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth, epitomized the Hollywood standard of beauty in the 1930s. Her popularity in Hollywood began to decline in the early 1940s, and she returned to Mexico where she was a star in Mexican cinema.

Overall a very enjoyable read. Dolores led a fascinating if tumultuous life, but by the third section, the story lost some of its momentum. The narrator Mara is a fictional character, and the third part of the novel focuses on Mara's search for her family in Mexico. An editor could have cut 50-75 pages out of this section and tightened up the story. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was excellent. Will appeal to readers who enjoy the novels of Marie Benedict and Fiona Davis, and anyone interested in the golden age of Hollywood.

Dolores del Rio

 

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

June 21, 2020

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

The unnamed narrator of Pizza Girl is 18 years old, Korean-American, pregnant, and single.  She lives with her mother and boyfriend who are supportive to the point of suffocation, and delivers pizzas at night.  Pizza Girl's father died a year earlier of alcoholism and as she works through her grief, she fears she is more like her father than she originally thought.  She thinks a lot about han, a Korean concept described as a sickness of the soul, an acceptance that life will be filled with sorrow and resentment.  As a pizza delivery girl, she encounters all kinds of people, and their lives seem perfect when compared to her own (until she learns that many of her customers are hiding dark secrets).  Delivering pizzas is just a job until a customer requests a pizza with pepperoni and pickles (how gross is that??).  The woman begins ordering the same pizza every week, and soon Pizza Girl is obsessed with the woman and her life.

The narrator hits new lows in characters making bad decisions and disturbing behavior:  unmarried, pregnant, no interest in college or a stable job, heavy drinking during pregnancy/heavy underage drinking, sexual confusion and obsession, theft, housebreaking, and just general aimlessness.  But the reader can't help feeling a certain tenderness toward this teenager and her raw emotions, her overall depression.  Small wonder that she continually grabs onto anyone or anything that interrupts her hopelessness.

There is a lot of stream of consciousness going on here, with the narrator frequently distracted by random thoughts.  The story and the main character were messier, more complicated and darker than I was expecting, especially with the colorful graffiti-like cover art.  I would have liked to know more about the family's background, their experience with racism as Korean immigrants,  There is some black humor but not enough to deflect the main character's overall depression.  I was expecting more from the ending, but there really wasn't any resolution.

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

August 5, 2019

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

As a young man, Claude Ballard was fascinated by moving pictures and takes a job as a representative for the Lumiere brothers, demonstrating and selling their cinematic equipment.  He went on to direct silent films and unexpectedly stopped after making his greatest film, "The Electric Hotel."  But the film is controversial, and he faces a legal challenge from Thomas Edison, who has patented the process of motion pictures and wants to be the sole creator and distributor (who knew Edison was such a bully?). 

Claude becomes reclusive, living at the shabby Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles, his room filled with containers of decaying film, photographing people on the street and foraging the hills for mushrooms and herbs.  When a film student asks to interview him and discuss his lost masterpiece for his thesis, Claude admits that in fact he has a copy of the film, and it isn't lost at all.  He is forced to re-live his career and his relationship with his muse Sabine Montrose, his life unspooling like a reel of film.  While "The Electric Hotel" is considered to be his masterpiece, Claude eventually reveals the film that he considers to be his greatest work.

In many ways, The Electric Hotel is an interesting read, spanning about 70 years and filled with information about the early days of motion pictures.  But the pacing is slow and the story drags through the painful process of making a silent film.  Many of the characters were detached and distant - the stuntman Chip was the best character in the book.  I stopped halfway through and read a couple of other books, then went back to this one.  I'm glad I did, since the last hundred pages make up for the first two hundred pages.  But unless you are really into cinematic history, I wouldn't recommend this one.