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Publisher's Weekly
The author of the bestselling Crowned Heads and The Other depicts a tarnished Hollywood dream in these interrelated novellas chronicling the overlapping lives of five glamorous movie stars, four of whom are bound together by their love for the bedhopping agent who pushed them to the top. The narrator is Charlie Caine, an actor turned writer who ticks off the blur of unhappy events that befall these women as their careers soar and stall. There's Babe, a blowsy, cut-rate Mae West; Belinda, whose bad seed daughter ruins more than one life; fragile April, who crumbles into madness under the weight of constant tragedy; Maude, the gracious doyenne of American film whose happy marriage may have been an illusion; and the supremely bitchy Claire, a scrabbling, grasping survivor. Famous names and recognizable situations are sprinkled throughout for flavor, but only a few surprising twists hint at Tryon's storytelling prowess. Otherwise, these tales of alcoholism, faithless men and broken women seem unremittingly grim and tedious. Literary Guild main selection.
Library Journal
Tryon's back, and headed for the best seller list again with a new Hollywood novel cut from the same cloth as Crowned Heads. In separate but interlocking segments, five fictional film stars are portrayed: an earthy sex symbol a la Mae West, a wartime girl-next-door, a sensitive intellectual driven mad by tinseltown's lack of privacy, a grande dame of the silent screen, and an embittered Oscar winner who turns to religion. All these women have the same agent, friend, and lover: Frankie Adano (a resourceful hustler, but not a particularly memorable character). Tryon's Hollywood lore is fun, but two of his heroines are so boring and vulgar that they are difficult to care about. Overlong and loaded with cliches, but likely to appeal to uncritical pop-fiction readers, who'll enjoy trying to identify who the characters ''really are.'' Joyce Smothers, Ocean Cty. Lib., Toms River, N.J.
Genre: General Fiction
The author of the bestselling Crowned Heads and The Other depicts a tarnished Hollywood dream in these interrelated novellas chronicling the overlapping lives of five glamorous movie stars, four of whom are bound together by their love for the bedhopping agent who pushed them to the top. The narrator is Charlie Caine, an actor turned writer who ticks off the blur of unhappy events that befall these women as their careers soar and stall. There's Babe, a blowsy, cut-rate Mae West; Belinda, whose bad seed daughter ruins more than one life; fragile April, who crumbles into madness under the weight of constant tragedy; Maude, the gracious doyenne of American film whose happy marriage may have been an illusion; and the supremely bitchy Claire, a scrabbling, grasping survivor. Famous names and recognizable situations are sprinkled throughout for flavor, but only a few surprising twists hint at Tryon's storytelling prowess. Otherwise, these tales of alcoholism, faithless men and broken women seem unremittingly grim and tedious. Literary Guild main selection.
Library Journal
Tryon's back, and headed for the best seller list again with a new Hollywood novel cut from the same cloth as Crowned Heads. In separate but interlocking segments, five fictional film stars are portrayed: an earthy sex symbol a la Mae West, a wartime girl-next-door, a sensitive intellectual driven mad by tinseltown's lack of privacy, a grande dame of the silent screen, and an embittered Oscar winner who turns to religion. All these women have the same agent, friend, and lover: Frankie Adano (a resourceful hustler, but not a particularly memorable character). Tryon's Hollywood lore is fun, but two of his heroines are so boring and vulgar that they are difficult to care about. Overlong and loaded with cliches, but likely to appeal to uncritical pop-fiction readers, who'll enjoy trying to identify who the characters ''really are.'' Joyce Smothers, Ocean Cty. Lib., Toms River, N.J.
Genre: General Fiction
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