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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â?˘ The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussoliniâ??s Italy to 1940s Los Angelesâ??a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena â??A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel thatâ??s a true joy to read.â?â??Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere â??A gorgeous book . . . sublime.â?â??The New York Times (Editorsâ?? Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR 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 fatherâ??s arrest. Fifteen years later, on the eve of Americaâ??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 wonâ??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, canâ??t escape the studioâ??s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Mariaâ??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 ĂŠmigrĂŠs: 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 fatherâ??s past threatens Mariaâ??s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her fatherâ??s fateâ??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 lifeâ??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 â??a… (more)
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The main characters have fled Europe because of the rise of fascism. There are twin brothers who are independent film producers who have a sister stuck back in Poland. One of them has an assistant who left Italy as a little girl with her mother, but her father is still imprisoned there. Her boyfriend is an Asian-American actor trying to get parts in Hollywood that arenât stereotypical. There are lots of other characters but this is the lens through which the story is told, perhaps the flipside to the usual representation of America in WWII. It felt a little heavy-handed at times in trying to accomplish this, especially at a time when so many other writers are trying to do the same thing, but not overly so. Marra is a strong, intelligent writer, and while staring history in the face he also peppers his fiction with humor and well-developed characters. It was a very enjoyable read, and I look for more from him.
Just one quote, on Christianity and communism:
[speaking of Jesus] âTalking about a fella who needs psychoanalysis. Poor guy thinks his dadâs God and his momâs a virgin. No wonder he has a messiah complex. Still, I must admit, I like Jesusâs politics. Feeding the hungry, blessing the meek, wearing a robe to work.â
Ned frowned; a junior nobody from Columbia had a better table than them. âThe problem with Christianity, of course, is the Christians.â
âItâs like communism. A belief system based on human dignity that somehow incites its adherents to mass murder.â
So this is a big novel, both in size and sweep. Marra doesn't limit himself to only a few characters or only a few places. It's a testament to his skill that it all comes together as well as it does; that his many diversions into side characters don't sink the story he's telling, but instead enhance it. This was a fast-paced novel with some happy endings, but also some tragic ones. Marra manages to write a novel full of heart without tipping into sentimentality. It was a lot of fun to read.
Set in
You could map the march of fascism across Europe base on Mercuryâs employment rolls.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
It turns out that 1940s Hollywood is the perfect venue to look at a multitude of historical realities. Fear of Japanese invasion. The censorship and the Red scare. The America First movement. Racism and the treatment of âresident aliensâ. Underpaid, invisible women. Tearing down Chinatown to build the train station. Unemployed Bela Lugosi impersonating himself. Actors unable to play their own ethnicity, Mariaâs Chinese lover forced to play evil Japanese soldiers. Itâs a crazy world, and yet perfectly historic, and unfortunately too recognizable.
In Italy, the antifascists are arrested for crimes they didnât commit, and here? Here theyâre arrested for crimes theyâre the victims of.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
I rooted for the underdog characters, Maria secretly filming a movie starring her Chinese lover asâshocking!âa Chinese man. Artie, perfectly imperfect, standing up to his cold-hearted brotherâs takeover of the studio. Nino, who escaped Italy under the assumed identity of a dead man, needing to make amends to the dead manâs mother. The architect whose Nazi German son is at risk of death from the very weapons being tested on her fake desert Berlin city. The vibrant, colorful people who populate the book snatch your heart.
I canât wait to recommend this book to my book club so I can read it again.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
I don't want to say too much about the plot, come at it blind and delight in its sharp humor and bracing wisdom. It is not all fun and games though, this is a story that perhaps most importantly shines a light on propaganda and on art (which are not diametrically opposing forces.) There is a scene where Maria is watching Triumph of the Will, dissecting Riefenstahl's methods, that is both insightful as hell and also funny. (The image of Maria speeding up the movie , turning off the sound and playing polka music behind it is so evocative.) There are similar scenes that focus on the battle footage, and why reenactments are realer than actual footage that were broadening and meaningful. The book showed me that I have a lot of blind spots about America because I bought into the propaganda perpetuated by educational materials and films and television. You think Germany was the only country that was ruled by a master race philosophy? Uh, no. That it taught me this lesson while making me literally laugh out loud, a lot, is the icing on the cake. There is also a beautiful love story that illustrates how master race theory breaks people down, even people who come from an attitude of joy and how love most certainly does not conquer that force. I should mention that this in not all grand ideas. These are wonderful characters. Marra loves these people, that is clear in every sentence, and as I reader I understood why he loved them. People are ultimately pretty darn lovable, even the not so great ones.
Marra's love of these characters leads me to my one complaint (it did not cost a full star but it is not nothing either.) This book sprawls a bit too much. The action in Hollywood and the action in Italy did not fully come together. There were so many characters that it got confusing. If I were Mara I would have cut a couple of minor digressions. The storyline about a miniaturist/architect named Anna seemed a bit tacked on to me and I thought her story would have been more impactful if it had been shaved down a good deal. There is a story about a detective in Italy who is guided by his love of Sherlock Holmes and of his cat that was funny and independently delightful but not essential and its inclusion made the Italy scenes more convoluted and less effective. I would not have minded the digressions, as mentioned they are well-written and entertaining, but they did not merit all the space and detail they got and their inclusion made the story a little too circuitous. Again though, its a minor quibble. I truly enjoyed this book.
If you want to read MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS because you loved CONSTELLATION, be warned that you will be disappointed.
âThe compact opulence of her build was downright subversive in this city of willowy starlets. She
At the center of this story, is Maria Lagana, who left Rome and arrived in LA, as a child. It was the early 1900s and over the next 15 years, through her drive and determination she rose through the ranks in a small Hollywood studio, called Mercury Pictures. This is one part of the tale, there are many other threads to follow, both in Italy, at the rise of the Third Reich and back in LA, as movies moved from the silent era to sound. Marra is a master wordsmith and I love his writing. The novel meanders a bit in the final third, taking a few narrative detours, that I found unnecessary but overall, it was a fine read and I am glad to see Marra back after a long hiatus.
Here's the thing. Although beautifully written, there are simply too many stories going on here, too many
characters, too many backstories and time shifts (some decades forward), that I felt I needed a scorecard, or at least a printed cast of characters. It's obvious that Marra has done voluminous research, but did he have to use it all in one book? Because, in the end, it just didn't all hang together that well. Over 400 pages of Italy in the war years, Hollywood history, refugees and displaced persons, misery and heartache, fascists, communists and Congressional hearings, racism and internment camps. Whew! Maybe all just a little too much. That said, I'll still recommend it for its fine writing. And I may have to check out his earlier novel, the one set in Chechnya. Sounds most intriguing.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
The story is funny in places, touching in places, and provides an interesting look at Hollywood during this time when so many emigrants from Europe found themselves working there.
There are times that I find the sentence structure and the allusions difficult to understand and there are way too many plot lines to keep track of: Hollywood, Maria's ambition and family issues, Eddie Lu's struggle, the father's struggle in Italy, Nino's story as a new person in US, and even the story of a minor policeman in Italy. Still, good read.
One of the rare 400 pagers that I didn't want to end, excellently done.
Those who seek freedom are often faced with obstacles so great that they have to compromise their values to survive. Guilt and innocence, right and wrong, good and evil, truth and lies, often seem to occupy the same space,
The novel takes place over several decades covering fascism, antisemitism, McCarthyism, Communism and any other "ism" that raised its ugly head, during the period. It was the time of heroes and villains, FDR, Il Duce, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito, all viewed alternately as heroes and villains depending on who was looking and what side they were on.
The main characters in this book all struggled to find their place in life. Artie Feldman, a Jew, was co-founder of Mercury Pictures. He was outgoing, but misjudged the true nature of some people, especially his own twin brother and partner, Ned. The Holocaust caused him great anxiety. His long-time secretary/production assistant was Maria Lagana, originally from Italy. Her well-intentioned choice backfired, causing her to carry guilt for years. She and her mother fled Italy and came to America, while her father was exiled to Calabria by Mussolini's oppressive policies. Her error in judgement, though well-intentioned, damned them. Eventually, they were designated as enemy aliens because of their backgrounds when Mussolini aligned with Hitler. Eddie Lu, A Chinese American, is forced to play bit parts or that of a villain because of his ethnicity. He and Maria are secret lovers because of laws about race mixing. He wears a pin advertising his Chinese, not Japanese, heritage. Vincent Cortese/Nino Picone, is also an enemy alien, but he has valuable assets so is allowed more freedom, although he is also an illegal alien. If a crime is not discovered or acknowledged, is it a crime?
There are so many characters and themes introduced, it often becomes confusing, but the main ideas about how close good and evil are, depending on who is in charge, had the greatest effect on my thinking. Is the righteousness of a behavior dependent on who the aggressor is, and how well thought of he is, or is it dependent on the laws of ethics and morality. Are the Ten Commandments meaningless or meaningful? Is ethical behavior determined by its ultimate goal? So many different philosophies were explored. Is there really so great a difference between the crime of a Concentration Camp and the creation of an Internment Camp for the Japanese during WWII. Yes, one was a killing field, and that was far worse, but both were designed as prison camps for innocent people, punished for their background, not their deeds. Of course, one was far more heinous than the other, but both were considered necessary evils by the men in charge; in one instance it was Hitler, and in the other, it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One is considered evil incarnate and one the quintessential hero of democracy. Does the means justify the end depending on the person pursuing it. Was Hirohito more wrong when he bombed Pearl Harbor or Truman when he bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Both claimed so many innocent lives. Did the means justify the ends? Are their differing opinions for all these questions? Is only one correct because of circumstances or who is calling the shots? Is there room for compromise?
Ned Feldman wanted to usurp control of Mercury Pictures and so he betrayed his twin brother, making him a multi-millionaire in the process. Maria believes she betrayed her father, hoping to save him. Nino betrayed the woman who raised him to save himself when her own son died. Eddie betrayed Mercury Pictures and simply walked out, mid-production to develop himself. Is survival the most important goal? Is the living, or how one lives, more important?
Who are the heroes of this book? Is it Artie and Maria for having the courage of their convictions or were they simply more successful in reaching their end-goals? Whose behavior was more righteous, Nino Picone, Ned Feldman, Vedette Clement or Maria Laganaâs? Vedette betrayed those she had befriended, to advance herself. Does it matter if her victims were guilty as charged, and she was innocent except for her actions? All were devious and betrayed others, but was their purpose what defined them or their behavior?
Was it more heinous to intern people because they might be enemy agents or because of their religion or sexual proclivity or mental acuity? Was it only more heinous in one place because of its ultimate goal and barbarism? Both trapped innocent people. Should the Japanese have been classified as enemy agents simply because of their ethnicity, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? Should American Germans have been considered enemy agents because we were at war with Germany? Weren't the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and the mentally infirm as worthy as the Aryans?
Are we now, in America, experiencing the same kind of conflicting philosophies with our politics of cancel culture, safe spaces for some, persecution of others simply for having different opinions and ideas, like medical doctors. Many were maligned for disagreeing with Covid 19 treatment. They were ridiculed and ostracized. What about the treatment of former President Trump and his family because of their contradictory beliefs about an election, or their use of documents for which others have not been condemned? Do the reigning politicians have the right to silence their opposition? Other former politicians have escaped even the idea of criticism, for worse behavior, like Hillary Clinton and her smashed phones and bit-bleached computers, like Obama holding onto classified documents long after they should have been returned, like Biden illegally having classified documents and lying about knowing about his son Hunterâs influence peddling while accusing and punishing the innocent for his own crimes of bribery? Should only one political party have the right to speak because they are in control and decide that is the way to maintain power?
Were the riots of 2020 mostly peaceful? Was January 6th an insurrection because those in power simply decided to define one instance in one way, and one in another, for what seems like political advantage, withholding all of the evidence and facts for that very purpose? Are we asleep at the wheel, committing the same errors in judgment over and over? These are the thoughts I had after reading the novel. The novel rambled a bit, so I may, as well, but in the end, the main philosophy was clear. The judgment is often in the eyes of the beholder, regardless of its truth. I wondered, are we marching in place? Have we learned nothing from history about peaceful coexistence?
We learn of her relationship with Chinese American actor Eddie Lu, friendship with an Italian immigrant with ties to her father, and a German emigree hired by the studio. Artie must travel to Washington DC to be questioned by the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda. Themes include the abuses of authoritarianism, the biases introduced through propaganda (and how readily it is believed), and how innocent people are harmed in the process. It is about human connections, figuring out oneâs path in the face of systemic discrimination, and the power of forgiveness.
Marra addresses these themes through a series of interrelated storylines. He inserts a good dose of humor along the way. There does not seem to be a main narrative arc. It is more a compilation of side stories that, taken together, form a picture of the social milieu of the time period. It is much different than other books I have read by Anthony Marra. It is certainly relevant to todayâs world where so many people seem willing to accept disinformation as the âtruth.â It is an enjoyable mix of historical storytelling, entertainment, and social commentary.
Ostensibly the story is about Maria, a plucky Italian emigree who, as WW2 erupts across Europe, flees Fascist Italy
If youâre looking for something that will keep your book club talking late into the night, this novel provides plentiful fodder for discussion: the ways in which both Hollywood and the novelâs large cast of emigrees reinvent reality from discarded scraps of the past; the Faustian bargains that so many characters are forced to make in order to protect themselves, their values, or the people they love; the abundant ironies and idiocies of war; the difficulties of making peace with injustice and fate and our own mistakes. Marraâs writing may be empathetic, but itâs also penetrating and perspicuous.
If youâre fascinated by authentic historical detail about Hollywood in its infancy, if you enjoy your heartbreak with a side of incisive humor, if you admire characters who endure hardship with resiliency, grace, and decency, then you're in for a treat. My only regret is that Iâll now have to wait a while before being able to justify re-reading this; but at least that gives me time to explore some of Marraâs other novels in the meantime.