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 betrayalโand the allure of the movies. With Giovanni Boccaccioโs 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. Maxโan Oscar-winning writer/director whose fame has wanedโand his lover, Elena, luxuriate in bed, still groggy from last nightโs 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 Maxโs ex-wife, โthe legendary Zoe Cunningham,โ a dazzling half-Jamaican movie star, with her new lover, the enigmatic healer, Paul (fraudulent? enlightened?). Maxโs agent, Stoney, a perhaps too easygoing version of his legendary agent father, canโt stay away, and neither can Zoe and Maxโs 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 everyoneโs secrets.
As they share their stories of Hollywood past and present, watch films in Maxโs 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 workโa 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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