Mercury Pictures Presents (Book Club Edition) by Anthony Marra
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Web ID: 15058384Great book
Jumped around a bit. I enjoyed this book. I liked the story of the side characters more sometimes
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Keep a Character Chart
So many good stories or possible movie scripts in Anthony Mara’s Mercury Pictures Presents. I liked the premise in the story but it became confusing with so many characters and the back and forth between time periods. I thought Maria’s story definitely portrayed job inequity in her job as “an associate producer.” My favorite characters were Anna, the miniaturist, and Lewis Harrington. This reader found herself in tears reading about Lewis and his struggles entering the service as a black man and how long he spent in jail.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A trudge to read.
I did not like Mercury Pictures. The story is interesting, if a bit shop worn. But it is extremely wordy, making it about 100 pages too long. The book shows evidence of extensive rewriting, as many sentences are embellished without adding to the story. Like this: The soggy brown ring where the grape meets the stem's damp tuft changes colors as the sun approaches the windowpane. I read through to see how it ended (trite) and do not recommend this book.
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A new perspective of WWII with humor and heart
We may think we’ve read all there is to read about World War II, but Anthony Marry has discovered and brought to life a segment that this reader has not seen before… what happened in Hollywood. While it is a war story, it’s more an immigrant’s tale, following well drawn, fascinating characters as they traverse from Nazi controlled Italy to the bright lights. Marra braids the stories of Mercury Pictures a B grade movie house and the feuding twin brothers who run Mercury with stories from Hollywood personalities, overbearing politicians and displaced immigrants trapped in wartime quarantine. His characters include a photographer, an architect specializing in miniatures, a clever guilt-ridden daughter of the best lawyer in San Lorenzo, and a supporting cast of aunts, politicians, and ladder climbers to create an extensive though brilliant cast of characters. Throughout the story, Marra’s fresh language, sharp wit, and humor from a time where we’ve been conditioned to find none, carries a story threatens to break the reader. As it is, the humanity holds both the novel and the reader together. It’s simply brilliant. Thanks to the publisher, Random House Hogarth for this advanced readers copy.
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Talented writer
A talented writer. This book is a juxtaposition of some chapters on life pre and during WW2 in Italy which are very sad about the hardship of life then. Then there are the other chapters on life in L.A. early to mid 20th century, which are fascinating. I enjoyed the chapters on L.A. - those were witty with a fabulous sense of humor about people and everyday life in L.A. I enjoyed reading these chapters immensely. I would have preferred an entire book about this, rather than a book about two completely different and opposite realities. If there were a sequel about just the life in the USA, I would buy it.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
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Wow amazing book.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
not for me
I read and liked Marra's powerful A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Thus, I was quite pleased to receive an advance copy of this, his latest book. BUT. I found this book numbing, looong, and boring. I was never engaged and could have walked away at any time, I persevered--without payoff. It could have/should have been more--I was sorely disappointed. The setting: Maria Lagana, leaves Mussolini's Italy to reinvent herself and survive. She moves to Los Angeles with her mother "...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 ... 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." Melodramatic? Perhaps. But there's McCarthyism, fascism, racism, sexism, anti-foreigners [many emigres/refugees] populating 1940s Hollywood--all real. The many, many descriptions where Hollywood sets were built to mimic/stand in for battles/propaganda were interesting [as were some of the other Hollywood details], but... And, though many of the characters were well drawn {Maria, Artie, Ned, Vincent, Eddie [to name a few!], I wasn't invested in any of them. I enjoyed the multiple flashes of humor and often wonderful descriptions: "watching a pigeon autograph the windshield of her boss's new convertible" "compact opulence of her build" "Despite their love of cigarettes, physical inertia, and bootlegged grappa of questionalbe potabily, the great-aunts exuded immortality." "coniferous chill transmitted across thousands of miles" but the prose was not enough to sustain me. In the distinct minority of readers. This book did nothing for me. And ultimately, the ending too pat.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Italy and Los Angeles during World War II
Mercury Pictures Presents is a wonderful mixture of pre-World War II Italy and Los Angeles, World War II in LA, and post-World War II. Anthony Marra vivdly depicts life in Italy under the Nazi's careful gaze, and flows seemingly into life in LA as resident aliens. These settings serve as a virtual backdrop for Maria and her life as a single, professional woman at an upstart moving picture company, while dealing with the implications of an Italian family in the US during World War II. With all of the plot twists and turns, one can see Maria and her view of Italy and Los Angeles. Well done, Mr. Marra. Well done.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com