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Alison Plantaine #3
The Price of Fame
The third title in a powerful and moving trilogy featuring Alison Plantaine, star of the London stage and heiress to a secret Jewish heritage her family has long denied. Alison's son, sheltered abroad throughout the war, returns a rebel and rivals his mother in the theater world.
Paperback
First published October 1, 1985
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About the author
Maisie Mosco
20 books20 followersMaisie Mosco was born as Maisie Gottlieb. Her parents were of Latvian Jewish and Viennese Jewish descent, and both emigrated to England around 1900.
She left school at the age of 14 to help in the family business. At the age of 18 she joined the ATS and at the end of World War II was helping to teach illiterate soldiers how to read. After the war, she edited the Jewish Gazette, and subsequently wrote radio plays for the BBC.
Mosco wrote 16 novels between 1979 and 1998. These included the 'Almonds and Raisins' series, which contained elements of her own family history.
She married twice: to Aubrey Liston in 1948, then to Gerald Mosco in 1957.
She left school at the age of 14 to help in the family business. At the age of 18 she joined the ATS and at the end of World War II was helping to teach illiterate soldiers how to read. After the war, she edited the Jewish Gazette, and subsequently wrote radio plays for the BBC.
Mosco wrote 16 novels between 1979 and 1998. These included the 'Almonds and Raisins' series, which contained elements of her own family history.
She married twice: to Aubrey Liston in 1948, then to Gerald Mosco in 1957.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 31, 2021
4.5
Certainly not a refined read (this wouldn't be amiss at the bargain bin of a charity shop or doctors' office) but there is something singularly engrossing about Maisie Mosco and her style of writing that just makes reading it a total blast. While best known for her Almonds and Raisins series, about a Jewish family finding their feet in 1900s Manchester, the late Mosco's Alison Plaintaine trilogy similarly depicts Jewish people and their quest for status and standing in 1900s Manchester, but admittedly in a far more melodramatic, affected, ridiculously enjoyable manner.
The Price of Fame, the final part in this sprawling bildungsroman charting the life and times of one Alison Plaintaine, an actress constantly torn between matters of the stage and matters of the heart, will make you view Boyhood as positively churlish by comparison. It's a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy that delivers much of the same as its predecessors but ties up all the loose ends and packages them expertly in a nice, neat bow. Maybe it's the cliff-hangers, maybe it's the glitz and glam of mid-2oth Century theatre, maybe it's the warmth and care with which Mosco depicts its lead and her bickering (sometimes chosen) family, but irregardless, you have an emotional connection to them all and honestly - I felt a little sad when I finished it. It's a real, little-remembered gem of a series and just the perfect distraction to turn your brain off to and thumb through mindlessly. Was nice, too, to have the introduction of Alison's granddaughter and the attempts to swing it in the (then) present day.
The second novel in the series, A Sense of Place, perhaps had more to say: about the assimilation of half-Jewish Alison into theatrical society, about her doomed love affair with a Berlin intellectual and her irresolution in giving up her career for motherhood, but I just might prefer The Price of Fame; it's cordial and inviting, allowing its readers to really feel like a member of the family and bathe in the glow of a payoff that is three whole books in the making.
Certainly not a refined read (this wouldn't be amiss at the bargain bin of a charity shop or doctors' office) but there is something singularly engrossing about Maisie Mosco and her style of writing that just makes reading it a total blast. While best known for her Almonds and Raisins series, about a Jewish family finding their feet in 1900s Manchester, the late Mosco's Alison Plaintaine trilogy similarly depicts Jewish people and their quest for status and standing in 1900s Manchester, but admittedly in a far more melodramatic, affected, ridiculously enjoyable manner.
The Price of Fame, the final part in this sprawling bildungsroman charting the life and times of one Alison Plaintaine, an actress constantly torn between matters of the stage and matters of the heart, will make you view Boyhood as positively churlish by comparison. It's a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy that delivers much of the same as its predecessors but ties up all the loose ends and packages them expertly in a nice, neat bow. Maybe it's the cliff-hangers, maybe it's the glitz and glam of mid-2oth Century theatre, maybe it's the warmth and care with which Mosco depicts its lead and her bickering (sometimes chosen) family, but irregardless, you have an emotional connection to them all and honestly - I felt a little sad when I finished it. It's a real, little-remembered gem of a series and just the perfect distraction to turn your brain off to and thumb through mindlessly. Was nice, too, to have the introduction of Alison's granddaughter and the attempts to swing it in the (then) present day.
The second novel in the series, A Sense of Place, perhaps had more to say: about the assimilation of half-Jewish Alison into theatrical society, about her doomed love affair with a Berlin intellectual and her irresolution in giving up her career for motherhood, but I just might prefer The Price of Fame; it's cordial and inviting, allowing its readers to really feel like a member of the family and bathe in the glow of a payoff that is three whole books in the making.
Displaying 1 of 1 review