A glorious new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner: a big, smart, bawdy tale of love and war, sex and politics, friendship and betrayal?and the allure of the movies.
Knopf
February 2007
On Sale: February 13, 2007
464 pages ISBN: 1400040612 EAN: 9781400040612 Hardcover Add to Wish List
A glorious new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner: a big, smart, bawdy tale of love and war, sex and politics, friendship and betrayalβand the allure of the movies. With Giovanni Boccaccioβs Decameron as her model, Jane Smiley takes us through ten transformative, unforgettable days in the Hollywood hills.
It is the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards. Maxβan Oscar-winning writer/director whose fame has wanedβand his lover, Elena, luxuriate in bed, still groggy from last nightβs red-carpet festivities. They are talking about movies, talking about love, and talking about the war in Iraq, recently begun. But soon their house will be full of guests, and guests like these demand attention. There is Maxβs ex-wife, βthe legendary Zoe Cunningham,β a dazzling half-Jamaican movie star, with her new lover, the enigmatic healer, Paul (fraudulent? enlightened?). Maxβs agent, Stoney, a perhaps too easygoing version of his legendary agent father, canβt stay away, and neither can Zoe and Maxβs daughter, Isabel, though she would prefer to maintain her hard-won independence. And of course there is the next-door neighbor, Cassie, who seems to know everyoneβs secrets.
As they share their stories of Hollywood past and present, watch films in Maxβs opulent screening room, gossip by the swimming pool, and tussle in the many bedrooms, the tension mounts, sparks fly, and Smiley delivers an exquisitely woven, virtuosic workβa Hollywood novel as only she could fashion it, told with bravura, rich with delightful characters, spiced with her signature wit. It is a joyful, sexy, and wondrously insightful pleasure.
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