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1 of 1 copy available
“A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that’s a true joy to read.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
“A gorgeous book . . . sublime.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Guardian, Booklist
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate—and her own.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 2, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593416389
- File size: 404714 KB
- Duration: 14:03:09
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 11, 2022
Marra’s meticulously crafted latest (after the collection The Tsar of Love and Techno) follows a host of outsiders as they try to make it through pre-WWII Italy and wartime Los Angeles with some of their morals intact. Teenage Maria Lagana and her mother leave Italy for Los Angeles after Fascists exile her father. By 1941, Maria is B-movie producer Artie Feldman’s second-in-command. Artie, a toupee-wearing loudmouth with a heart of gold (he’ll hire any down on their luck European exile), is at war with the censors, his twin brother/business partner, and the bankers with a stake in Mercury Pictures. Marra skillfully switches between small-town Sicily and a still-small Los Angeles where, post–Pearl Harbor, Maria must register as an internal enemy and her Chinese American boyfriend, Eddie, has to flee assailants who are convinced he’s a Japanese spy. The plot is intricate: Artie tries to release a political movie and fend off creditors, Maria and Eddie plot to make a film, a Berlin-born model-builder recreates her city, a Sicilian photographer flees Italy. While Marra’s pleasure in the details and argot of the past occasionally feels like overkill, this tough-minded, funny outing exemplifies what Maria calls the democratic promise of “the miniaturist’s gaze,” in which “all were worthy.” Thanks to Marra, the pleasure is contagious. -
Carlotta Brentan gives a fine narration of this saga of Hollywood in the '30s and '40s. With her father in prison for anti-fascist activities in Italy, Maria, along with her mother, moves to an Italian neighborhood in Los Angeles. Maria becomes a secretary for the head of Mercury Pictures, Artie Feldman. Her secret romance with an Asian actor is disrupted when part of her past, in the person of an Italian immigrant, catches up with her. Brentan slips easily in and out of a variety of accents. She keeps the family's secrets well hidden and underplays the occasionally florid text. But the story is familiar, and the characters are stereotypes, especially Feldman, who behaves like every wheeler-dealer producer from every old Hollywood movie about Hollywood. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine -
June 10, 2024
Maria Lagana and her mother flee Mussolini's Italy just before the United States enters World War II. They settle in Los Angeles, and Maria finds a job as a typist at the Mercury Film Studio. The B-movie studio, run by brothers Artie and Ned Feldman, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, but introduces Maria to many larger-than-life characters who help to create movie magic. When the U.S. enters the war, immigrants from Italy, Germany, and Japan are suddenly classified as enemy aliens, with severely restricted movements and prospects. Throughout this time, Maria faces and overcomes many of the difficulties that come with being an immigrant and a woman in a man's world. Marra (The Tsar of Love and Techno) creates an eloquent and moving story about family, immigration, xenophobia, opportunity, and forgiveness. Talented narrator Carlotta Brentan delivers the story with a delightful array of accents, handily communicating Marra's engaging wordplay. Brentan's comedic timing perfectly aligns with the text. VERDICT An engrossing window into the complex world behind the glitter of 1940s Hollywood. Recommended for book clubs, where Maria's moxie is sure to please.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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