Day: September 29, 2013

The Landlord’s Daughter

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

A Sunday afternoon curled up Mr Couch reading a Monica Dickens novel should be delightful right? Then why am I staring at The Landlord’s Daughter wondering if blasting through Season Five of Deadly Women on Netflix would have been a better use of my Sunday afternoon?

According to the Internet, The Landlord’s Daughter is Monica Dickens reworking/re-imagining of Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman. I must not have the brain to properly appreciate poems and literature because I don’t care for The Landlord’s Daughter. There are so many parts of the book that could have been turned into novels of their own which I would have happily read. But mushed all together? Yuck. The framing story with Charlie (the landlord’s daughter) widower and wannabe musician Terence has a Patricia Highsmith/Ripley feel. Charlie’s background as the plain girls school gym mistress who leads a narrow and chaste life in her run down cottage, an outsider from her family (rich landlord father, famous artist model mother, popular actor brother and society beauty younger sister) could have drawn even more on the experiences Monica Dickens had living as a spinster in her little country cottage. She could have even expanded the plot thread of the sister in law dying of TB from her working as a cook/housekeeper in the 1930s for a family with a mother dying of TB.

Instead what we get is a story that leaps from the current time (circa the late 1960s) back to the early 1930s and back again. Just when you’re getting cozy with Charlie at school, BANG, it’s time for Charlie’s widower to pop up and babble on about dealing with his daily cleaner and Terence. There is a way to make these jumps less annoying because golly knows that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell does it superbly in A Dark-Adapted Eye which also has a mysterious at its core. But Rendell’s mystery is interesting. I really don’t care what “Jack Morgan” did or didn’t do. If you must do the whole story told as a memoir for the descendants thing, why cut off at the point Monica Dickens does. If “Jack Morgan” and Julia’s loathing of her mother is so important keep writing and show me what Charlie endured after “Jack”‘s death and the birth of Julia. Or tell me the story from Julia’s perspective of discovering the truth about her parentage and her mother’s secret life.

If you do appreciate poems and literature and are made of stronger stuff then me, by all means pick up The Landlord’s Daughter. For me? I’d rather re-read one of Monica Dickens memoirs any day. Heck, I’d rather re-read The Nightingales Are Singing and you know how much I loved that book. Maybe I’ll have a revelation and find a way to better get my head around The Landlord’s Daughter like I did with The Happy Prisoner. But at least The Happy Prisoner felt more like a proper novel versus The Landlord’s Daughter everything in the fridge stew of ideas.

 

 

 

Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

If I say “burlesque” what springs to mind? Gypsy Rose Lee? Dita Von Teese? Sally Rand? Blaze Starr? Lili St. Cyr?

All lovely and talented ladies indeed. Does the world need another book all about Gypsy Rose Lee? Not really.  I’ve read and reviewed them all. But there is a whole history and other people in the burlesque world whose stories need to be told. Luckily Leslie Zemeckis is among the few who are willing to delve down and let the ladies talk. Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America  is a solid but fast read. First the basics, burlesque is more than some hard body bleached blonde grinding away on the pole and showing almost everything…okay is some cases everythangggggggg. Burlesque was a world with singers, comedians, dancers, novelty acts and yes, ladies who might remove a garment or seventeen all in the name of entertainment. The Alan Alda all our moms swooned over back in the day when M*A*S*H ruled the airwaves? Raised backstage as his father Robert worked as a “tit singer”. Yes a “tit singer” is a real thing. I swear. Stop giggling Blacklight. I mean it. Everyone else? Read Chapter 12 starting on page 72.

The genius of Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America, is the ladies themselves telling their stories. The stories aren’t pretty. Some of the women are proud of their pasts and eager to help Zemeckis with her project. Others are reluctant. One former dancer had a picture of herself in her prime hanging in her agency and no one thought to connect the lush girl in the picture with the elegant lady at the desk. Another is the last of three sisters to grace the stage and is let with just her memories after her last sister dies.

But burlesque isn’t just the ladies. Each chapter brings you deeper into the burlesque world from working around the censors to getting booked for an indecent act to the decline of the burlesque world into straight “get on the pole and work it nakey” stripping. By the middle of the book, you’re ready to powder up, slip on your costume, do your set and then wait in backstage until the next show.

You want to know more? Please scamper damper to Amazon or your local bookstore and pick up Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America. Sure it’s $24.95 and you might be on a budget. Go to your local library if they have it and if they don’t ask them to order it. Why are you still reading? Go get Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America NOW!

 

 

Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

My walls aren’t covered with black and white photos and my bookshelves don’t resemble the film section at Book Barn Downtown down Niantic way, but I do love me some classic Hollywood. I didn’t grow up in a town with classic film revival houses. The only classic movie my parents had was the 1933 King Kong included with our RCA SelectaVision player. What turned me onto classic Hollywood was a discovery made in the stacks of the S-bury Public Library circa 1983, legendary film star Gloria Swanson’s 1980 Swanson on Swanson bound in Tiffany blue vinyl leatherette covering. From page one, I was hooked.

Now the problem with loving Classic Hollywood is biographies. You can build a fort with all the books on Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford out there. <pushes aside idea of attempting to actually build a  book fort in the middle of the living room because the library WOULD revoke my inter-library loan privileges> For some stars, you have to rely on little bits here and there and maybe one autobiography to be treated with care since a star is only going to want to tell about the good. Like Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson fell into this category. You had Swanson on Swanson or Annette Tapert’s The Power of Glamour or Jeanine Basinger’s Silent Stars. All good in their owns ways but not the full on full length biography.

Enter Stephen Michael Shearer’s Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star. A star biography can go many ways. There’s the salacious (Irving Shulman’s Harlow: An Intimate Biography), the pandering (Charlotte Chandler’s Star Name: A Personal Biography series), the star autobiography and the outsider. Right now, I am thanking Stephen Michael Shearer and Gloria Swanson’s surviving family for working together to create a well rounded biography on a star who was the template for How To Be A Star. It’s heartbreaking but refreshing to have Swanson’s youngest child be so candid with an author. Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star isn’t a slap in the face or a white washed look. It’s real and honest and pulls back the veiling, the smoke and mirrors Swanson herself used in writing Swanson on Swanson. Gloria Swanson wasn’t the prettiest, most talented or clever person. She loved her career and the power and money it gave her. She wasn’t above putting her career first before family. She didn’t learn from her mistakes and made some of the same ones over and over and over. Was she a bad person? It depends. Was she fascinating? Yes. Did her peers like her? Sometimes.

Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star is a good solid read even if you’ve never heard of Gloria Swanson beyond Sunset Boulevard. Or heard of her at all. If you’re already in the know, Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star is must read even if it destroys certain cherished notions of Miss Swanson. Now off to request Swanson on Swanson from the inter-library loan system. Because reading Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star and Swanson on Swanson as companion pieces? Amazing…

The Happy Prisoner

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Scene from Company X, Building Z, First Floor, Unit Awesome Sauce on Friday September 27, 2013

Coworker 123: <grumbling and mumbling at her computer>

Me: <eating lunch while checking Amazon for the Daily Kindle Deal> “Sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks…The Happy Prisoner for $1.99? Monica Dickens is on KINDLE?!?!?!” <checks to see what other Monica Dickens titles are available> “It’s like Amazon KNEW I was going to write my The Happy Prisoner review this weekend!”

Coworker 123: <you can HEAR the massive eye-roll>

Don’t pity Coworker 123. Do you know how loud I have to have my iPod to drown out her constant stream of under her breath comments on everything? If you should pity anyone…GRRRRR

Blood pressure rising, calm down, calm down, am at home and just ate a chocolate chunk scone the size of my head. You have book reviews to write!

Yes, the Monica Dickens marathon continues until the inter-library loans resources are a) exhausted or b) the library system revokes my borrowing privileges. I COULD buy Monica Dickens on Kindle or track down used copies but am on the tightest of budgets right now because of course, Blacklight’s desktop computer is acting up and might need a new hard driver or motherboard or something that costs hundreds. <bangs head on throw pillow>. Thank Great Tulu for the Central Connecticut Library system.

Now what Monica Dickens did I devour this time, glaring at Blacklight whenever he came into the bedroom to bother me? Did you read the title of this blog post? No? Okay…. <sighs> On the chopping block today is 1947’s The Happy Prisoner by Miss Monica Dickens. To be very honest, through out the first reading, I was not impressed. The book seemed to not go anywhere, I was getting confused by characters and the only thing I was taking away from The Happy Prisoner was how very much I wanted to put on my shoes, grab my wallet, walk the five blocks to Walgreens to buy the biggest bar of chocolate in the place. Two ounces of chocolate for a person’s ration. TWO OUNCES! A better person (not me) should have been swooning over Oliver (our happy prisoner) and the love stories and glad that the evil American stepmother from hell Honey was played. Since when am I a better person? My initial thoughts for the review were BLAST IT INTO PIECES and then STOMP on the pieces and GET SOME DAMN CHOCOLATE.

However the next morning on my drive into work at 5:30 am (yes I start work at the crack of dawn), keeping an eye out for Bambi and friends on the twisting rural roads, a thought sprung into my head. No, NOT “is Starbucks in F-ton open so I can get a tall hot chocolate no whip” or “get gas now or after work”. Both those usually occur to me at some point on the way to work. What did spring into my head was the last quarter of The Happy Prisoner and especially the final page.

The bulk of the novel is all about our hero Oliver, recovering at home from his nearly deadly war injuries, he could die at any moment. In the household are his American mother, his sisters Violet and Heather, his young American cousin Evelyn and Oliver’s new nurse Elizabeth. Spinster Violet finds an unlikely love and marries. Heather struggles with faith and a crumbling marriage. Nurse Elizabeth is all remote and efficient. Mother flutters and Evelyn is obsessed with her horse. In a better mood, I would gobble this plot up like a long lost Angela Thirkell. But in the last quarter, things get a little more interesting. Heather’s prisoner of war husband returns with a big secret (no, he’s not gay-try “ZOMG he had a…mistress who died”. Evelyn’s father Bob comes to England for his daughter with his new wife, the elegant and terrifying Honey.  And Nurse Elizabeth’s tough shell is cracked-she wants to save Evelyn from the wicked stepmother because she…had a wicked stepmonster herself!

Remember the hought I had on the way to work? It’s a bit Gwen Crazy Literary Theories time. The last quarter of The Happy Prisoner reminds me a bit of Patrick Dennis, in particular his novel The Joyous Season, a romp about a couple who splits up, finds the most horrid replacements for their spouse and the chaos that ensues. One of the replacements? Miss Dorian Glen (government name Glendora from the sticks) is a lean, sleek, polished, too fashionable for her own good sex demon who wants nothing more than the glamorous New York society life in a fancy  apartment. Now before Patrick Dennis was well…the best selling author Patrick Dennis and still having adventures in the New York advertising world, across the pond Monica Dickens was crafting a character Miss Dorian Glen would call sister, the elegant, lean, too fashionable for her own good, self obsessed sex demon Honey who ensnares Evelyn’s father Bob in her honey trap.  Honey, who should really be called Honey Badger because girl don’t give a bleep, doesn’t care about England, society, the social niceties, her new stepdaughter beyond making her an accessory or the importance of pony club. Honey Badger is awesome. Honey Badger gives the last quarter of The Happy Prisoner life. 

All right, The Happy Prisoner was written six years before Patrick Dennis unleashed his poison pen in print but ****SPOILER ALERT**** DO NOT READ THE NEXT BIT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE THE ENDING SPOILED****YOU’RE STILL READING THIS? FINE! SPOILERS AHEAD!****Nurse Elizabeth breaking off her engagement to Mr Dull, rushing back to Oliver to declare her love and on the very last page find out Oliver caught measles from his cousin Evelyn? Love while things around you are in ruins? Pure Patrick Dennis.

Once my brain made the very deranged The Happy Prisoner/The Joyous Season connection, The Happy Prisoner became another book. It was as if my brain needed a back door to process it properly. I played the Casting Game. Can’t you just see Tasmin Greig (Black Books, Green Wing) as the tall, gawky, awkward, overgrown Land Girl Violet? Darren Boyd (Spy) as the invalid Oliver? Fay Bainter as their American mother? Gail Patrick as Honey Badger? And then I remembered when The Happy Prisoner was published. Literary audiences, battered down by war, rationing (still going on years after the war ended) and shortages would have loved a novel with someone coming home to a loving family, finding love in unlikely places and adjusting to the post war life. For as much as a reader might loathe Honey Badger for her evil and coldness, Honey Badger has lovely clothes and style and doesn’t cling to old social norms and she lives a glamorous life in New York City. Honey Badger is pretty darn awesome

If you devour British novels like peppermints and can wrap your head around the changing post World War II England, The Happy Prisoner is a must read. If not, Blacklight says “Stephen R. Donaldson is pretty cool.” <sighs>