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The Diamond Lane
Reluctantly back home in L.A. after 16 years in Africa, documentary filmmaker Mouse FitzHenry longs for the harsh, teeming jungle life her lens took in so lovingly. Wrenched Stateside by a family emergency, with her longtime boyfriend/collaborator in tow, Mouse is instantly beleaguered by a past she’d leapt continents to escape. In this rollicking novel, Karbo explores familiar subjects — the phony glitz of Hollywood, the fairy tale lure of love and marriage — with precision, compassion, and humor. Mouse’s paramour, Tony, a Brit who calls her “poppet,” adores L.A. and all that it can do for him and his screenplay. Mouse, meanwhile, caving in to maternal pressure, agrees to marry Tony and then proceeds, with the help of an old flame, to film around her unwitting fiancé a documentary on the entire process of their betrothal called Wedding March. A flawless, page-turning story emerges as Mouse and Tony manage — often with hilarious subterfuge — to keep their projects secret from one another. With its laugh-aloud moments and a cast of brilliantly drawn characters, this is a tale to treasure.
431 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1991
14 people are currently reading
728 people want to read
About the author
Karen Karbo
34 books225 followersKaren Karbo's first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, were also named New York Times Notable Books. The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics' Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Non-fiction.
Karbo is most well known for her international best-selling Kick Ass Women series, which examines the lives of a quartet of iconic 20th century women. Julia Child Rules (2013), How Georgia Became O'Keeffe (2011), The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (2009), and How to Hepburn (2007)
Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, was a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award, and was one of 24 writers chosen for the inaugural Amtrak Writers residency.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
She is the co-author, with Gabrielle Reece, of Big Girl in the Middle, and the New York Times bestselling, My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less than Perfect Life.
Karbo also contributed to the anthologies, The Bitch is Back and What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
Karbo is most well known for her international best-selling Kick Ass Women series, which examines the lives of a quartet of iconic 20th century women. Julia Child Rules (2013), How Georgia Became O'Keeffe (2011), The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (2009), and How to Hepburn (2007)
Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, was a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award, and was one of 24 writers chosen for the inaugural Amtrak Writers residency.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
She is the co-author, with Gabrielle Reece, of Big Girl in the Middle, and the New York Times bestselling, My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less than Perfect Life.
Karbo also contributed to the anthologies, The Bitch is Back and What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 16, 2014
There are many novels that start well, make it to page fifty, and slide into second rate writing. There are many more that make it part or most of the way through only to do the same. There are a select few that make it all the way to the end without once tilting south in quality. Then there are novels like The Diamond Lane, where it seems the author could go on at this peak level of wit and storytelling skill far beyond the last page. Karbo gives the impression of being a natural, and you, dear reader, are the lucky recipient.
January 17, 2015
Incredible book, barely dated, why is this not a feature film?
I don't recall how I stumbled upon this one, but I'm so so glad I did. It kind of reminds me of Get Shorty, in that it's about how terrible and wonderful the film industry is. You will probably love it. Somebody should make it into a movie immediately.
I don't recall how I stumbled upon this one, but I'm so so glad I did. It kind of reminds me of Get Shorty, in that it's about how terrible and wonderful the film industry is. You will probably love it. Somebody should make it into a movie immediately.
May 3, 2023
Interesting, but just not interesting enough to compete with everything else!
July 27, 2018
I enjoyed this witty and occasionally farcical novel about Los Angeles, first published in 1991 and just reissued. You would think it would feel dated, this romantic comedy of errors written before cell phones took over the world, but it doesn’t.
The two main characters are the sisters Mimi and Mouse, both in their thirties. Mouse is serious, minimalist, a documentary filmmaker who’s been living in Africa for many years, and she goes through extreme culture shock when she comes back to gaudy, glitzy L.A. Her sister Mimi is totally immersed in the culture, and like everyone else, trying to make it big in the film industry.
Mouse returns because her mother, Shirl, has had an accident. (She’s gotten brained by a falling chandelier in a restaurant.) Due to a bad phone connection, Shirl and Mimi are both under the impression that Mouse is about to get married, and as it happens, Mouse arrives accompanied by her film-making partner and lover, Tony. She isn’t really into marriage, even though Tony has proposed to her a couple of times, but hating to disappoint her mother, she pretends it’s true – and then figures “Well – why not?”
There’s a certain amount of confusion that just comes from living in L.A. Both of them get involved in clandestine film projects which center around the impending wedding. Mouse’s documentary project is bankrolled by an old crush, and when she tries to tell Tony, he won’t go for it. But Tony can’t bring himself to tell Mouse about his project, either – because Mouse is a stickler for accuracy, and he’s taken their love story and turned into an outrageous potential blockbuster. His meetings with various film bigshots are hilarious.
Some quotes:
< Mimi said even if Ralph was single she wasn’t sure she’d marry him. This was a lie but she liked the way it sounded. She said she thought being married to Ralph was probably like being married to Kafka. Lisa said Kafka was better than nobody. A long conversation followed in which Mimi and Lisa thought of awful, famous men no one could pay them enough to be married to. >
< Therapy made Mimi feel like a failure. The shrink always thought she was guiding Mimi into uncovering her true feelings, when in fact the agonized look that crossed Mimi’s face was often the result of her realization that she hadn’t put enough money in the parking meter.>
< If Mouse’s destination was within five miles, she walked, a plastic 7-up bottle retrieved from Mimi’s garbage full of tap water, half a sandwich wrapped in a recycled swatch of crinkled aluminum foil stowed on her back in a knapsack. She claimed that true knowledge of a place could be gained only through the soles of one’s feet. Twice in one day she was stopped by the police. What, they wanted to know, was she doing? Walking, she said. They remained suspicious. >
< He (Tony) was taken with L.A.’s fiddling-while-Rome-burned ambience, the populace cheerfully asphyxiating itself, building million-dollar homes that perennially slid to the valleys below. He admired Hollywood. >
There’s a priceless section about a rich couple who have spared no expense to remodel a house so that it looks truly authentic. Here’s a conversation about the house, between two admiring guests at a party:
<
“The walls were painted thirteen times, then wall-papered, then they scraped it off. There’s something je ne said quoi about a wall that’s had wallpaper scraped off. Gives it such a real feel. And the floors, have you noticed they’re not even? They had them ripped up and relaid off kilter. Tooty didn’t like them flat. That was too California, she said, flat and perfect.”
“Someone said that when they finished the remodeling, Michael and Tooty were in France for a few months so they flew her parents out from Boston just to hang out, give it that lived-in feel. Her mother baked and her father smoked his pipe in front of the fire. I don’t think they slept here, though. Tooty didn’t want it that lived-in. Leaving that old-people smell on everything.”
“The mildew is a nice touch, though.”
“I love the mildew.” >
The two main characters are the sisters Mimi and Mouse, both in their thirties. Mouse is serious, minimalist, a documentary filmmaker who’s been living in Africa for many years, and she goes through extreme culture shock when she comes back to gaudy, glitzy L.A. Her sister Mimi is totally immersed in the culture, and like everyone else, trying to make it big in the film industry.
Mouse returns because her mother, Shirl, has had an accident. (She’s gotten brained by a falling chandelier in a restaurant.) Due to a bad phone connection, Shirl and Mimi are both under the impression that Mouse is about to get married, and as it happens, Mouse arrives accompanied by her film-making partner and lover, Tony. She isn’t really into marriage, even though Tony has proposed to her a couple of times, but hating to disappoint her mother, she pretends it’s true – and then figures “Well – why not?”
There’s a certain amount of confusion that just comes from living in L.A. Both of them get involved in clandestine film projects which center around the impending wedding. Mouse’s documentary project is bankrolled by an old crush, and when she tries to tell Tony, he won’t go for it. But Tony can’t bring himself to tell Mouse about his project, either – because Mouse is a stickler for accuracy, and he’s taken their love story and turned into an outrageous potential blockbuster. His meetings with various film bigshots are hilarious.
Some quotes:
< Mimi said even if Ralph was single she wasn’t sure she’d marry him. This was a lie but she liked the way it sounded. She said she thought being married to Ralph was probably like being married to Kafka. Lisa said Kafka was better than nobody. A long conversation followed in which Mimi and Lisa thought of awful, famous men no one could pay them enough to be married to. >
< Therapy made Mimi feel like a failure. The shrink always thought she was guiding Mimi into uncovering her true feelings, when in fact the agonized look that crossed Mimi’s face was often the result of her realization that she hadn’t put enough money in the parking meter.>
< If Mouse’s destination was within five miles, she walked, a plastic 7-up bottle retrieved from Mimi’s garbage full of tap water, half a sandwich wrapped in a recycled swatch of crinkled aluminum foil stowed on her back in a knapsack. She claimed that true knowledge of a place could be gained only through the soles of one’s feet. Twice in one day she was stopped by the police. What, they wanted to know, was she doing? Walking, she said. They remained suspicious. >
< He (Tony) was taken with L.A.’s fiddling-while-Rome-burned ambience, the populace cheerfully asphyxiating itself, building million-dollar homes that perennially slid to the valleys below. He admired Hollywood. >
There’s a priceless section about a rich couple who have spared no expense to remodel a house so that it looks truly authentic. Here’s a conversation about the house, between two admiring guests at a party:
<
“The walls were painted thirteen times, then wall-papered, then they scraped it off. There’s something je ne said quoi about a wall that’s had wallpaper scraped off. Gives it such a real feel. And the floors, have you noticed they’re not even? They had them ripped up and relaid off kilter. Tooty didn’t like them flat. That was too California, she said, flat and perfect.”
“Someone said that when they finished the remodeling, Michael and Tooty were in France for a few months so they flew her parents out from Boston just to hang out, give it that lived-in feel. Her mother baked and her father smoked his pipe in front of the fire. I don’t think they slept here, though. Tooty didn’t want it that lived-in. Leaving that old-people smell on everything.”
“The mildew is a nice touch, though.”
“I love the mildew.” >
August 21, 2020
What drew me to this novel initially was Nancy Pearl's recommendation. An introduction by Jane Smiley intrigued me, hailing the topics as timely and the author's laser skill with characters among other things. The novel was originally published in 1991 and reissued by Hawthorne Books in 2014, which must mean something, right?
Mouse FitzHenry is lured into returning to LA from a sixteen-year stint making documentary films in Africa. Shirl, her mother, has suffered a traumatic brain injury when a restaurant ceiling fan fell on her. Mimi, her older sister, an underpaid, undervalued secretary, writing a "blockbuster" script, misunderstands her garbled phone conversation with Mouse and believes she is marrying her English colleague and partner, Tony. Mouse FitzHenry "thought marriage was something a couple resorted to only after they'd run out of other things to do." Marriage was out of fashion when Mouse left in the 70's but now, it is the thing to do, Shirl's dream come true. Satire about over-the-top spending and attention to details no one will remember are not spared by the author. "We're all finding out it is easier to be our mothers than ourselves."
The novel is a deep dive into the challenges of getting any film made, the capriciousness of the industry and the shallowness of the people inside with a cast of minor characters who walk in and out of the plot, doing whatever they must to get ahead. "It was no secret that In L.A. you could make a career out of running errands."
The major characters are intent on pursuing their dreams and often hampered by their human frailties. Mimi, with an eating disorder embedded in her life, is taking a screenwriting class with Ralph, a married man, and also having an affair with him. Tony Cheatham, Mouse's "fiance," working with Ralph, is secretly pitching "Love Among Gorillas," a documentary he had been writing in Africa but never shared with Mouse. When she was sixteen, Mouse loved Ivan Esparza but never told him. Mimi married and divorced him. Ivan is now an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and Mouse, without telling Tony, is making "Wedding March," based on their wedding preparations with Ivan.
A plot that just keeps moving forward amid ignored phone calls and personal disappointments, a level of understanding reached among the characters, and an unexpected ending made the novel live up to Jane Smiley's promises.
"Life here was weighted with the vague feeling that if anything was happening, it was happening wherever one wasn't."
Mouse FitzHenry is lured into returning to LA from a sixteen-year stint making documentary films in Africa. Shirl, her mother, has suffered a traumatic brain injury when a restaurant ceiling fan fell on her. Mimi, her older sister, an underpaid, undervalued secretary, writing a "blockbuster" script, misunderstands her garbled phone conversation with Mouse and believes she is marrying her English colleague and partner, Tony. Mouse FitzHenry "thought marriage was something a couple resorted to only after they'd run out of other things to do." Marriage was out of fashion when Mouse left in the 70's but now, it is the thing to do, Shirl's dream come true. Satire about over-the-top spending and attention to details no one will remember are not spared by the author. "We're all finding out it is easier to be our mothers than ourselves."
The novel is a deep dive into the challenges of getting any film made, the capriciousness of the industry and the shallowness of the people inside with a cast of minor characters who walk in and out of the plot, doing whatever they must to get ahead. "It was no secret that In L.A. you could make a career out of running errands."
The major characters are intent on pursuing their dreams and often hampered by their human frailties. Mimi, with an eating disorder embedded in her life, is taking a screenwriting class with Ralph, a married man, and also having an affair with him. Tony Cheatham, Mouse's "fiance," working with Ralph, is secretly pitching "Love Among Gorillas," a documentary he had been writing in Africa but never shared with Mouse. When she was sixteen, Mouse loved Ivan Esparza but never told him. Mimi married and divorced him. Ivan is now an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and Mouse, without telling Tony, is making "Wedding March," based on their wedding preparations with Ivan.
A plot that just keeps moving forward amid ignored phone calls and personal disappointments, a level of understanding reached among the characters, and an unexpected ending made the novel live up to Jane Smiley's promises.
"Life here was weighted with the vague feeling that if anything was happening, it was happening wherever one wasn't."
February 15, 2025
I have a weird obsession with reading books that people are reading on tv shows and movies that I watch. This one is a bit of a weird one, because someone was reading a book called "Diamond Lane" in a show I was watching, but that book didn't actually exist, but this one did, and the blurb intrigued me.
The story was interesting, but none of the characters were very compelling, this is one of those books that kind of drags along and then pulls it together at the end. Definitely worth the read, but not my most favorite. I'm also still a bit disappointed that "the diamond lane" was apparently the high occupancy vehicle lane.
The story was interesting, but none of the characters were very compelling, this is one of those books that kind of drags along and then pulls it together at the end. Definitely worth the read, but not my most favorite. I'm also still a bit disappointed that "the diamond lane" was apparently the high occupancy vehicle lane.
October 19, 2018
My mother Lenore turned me onto Karen Karbo, and this book is laugh out loud funny. Satirists get a raw deal, as far as being in literary Cannons, because they a. make it look easy and b. don't lend themselves to being caricatured. Russians in LA, don't miss out!
October 25, 2017
I wish it had been better, but given the subject matter, not sure what I should've expected.
April 8, 2020
This is a bitingly satirical and, at time farcical look at Los Angeles and the business of making a movie. It would make a great film!
December 14, 2014
Life here was weighted with the vague feeling that if anything was happening, it was happening wherever one wasn’t. Maybe that accounted for all the driving…Eleven million people scurrying around, trying to find the exclusive exciting event that would make them feel at the center of something big.
Mimi Fitzhenry is the type of living-in-Hollywood character who chooses to host book club because she had her apartment cleaned rather than pick up her sister, whom she hasn’t seen in seven years and who is flying 21 hours from Nairobi. Mouse, the sister, is only returning because Mimi’s phone call to her was so garbled that she thinks their mother is dying after being hit on the head by a ceiling fan. Mimi’s take-away from the conversation is that Mouse is getting married, which is she is not. These are just two small pieces of the foundation for Karen Karbo’s witty delight, The Diamond Lane.
The rest of this review can be read at The Gilmore Guide to Books: http://wp.me/p2B7gG-RE
February 26, 2015
Good writing. A story about 2 sisters and one of the sister's upcoming wedding. Though really, that very brief summary doesn't do it justice at all. There's so much to the book that it's impossible to summarize. Is it about 2 sisters? Is it about 1 woman getting caught up in the wedding industry and having to marry her longtime-boyfriend? Is it about the film industry in LA? Is it about indie movies? Is it about a woman who always feels left out and like life passed her by? Is it about a very disfunctional family of 3 women? The diamond lane could represent the carpool line that is supposed to get people places faster if they carpool, but it inevitably gets clogged with single-passenger cars. Or is it about diamonds in weddings and how people can easily get carried away? I don't have any answers (even after reading the book), but it's a surprisingly good book that will stay with you for many years to come.
June 12, 2015
This was a surprisingly charming story that is surprising difficult to describe. You have a sister who has been in Africa away from her family finally returning home to L.A. where her sister has been stuck trying to succeed in a city that seems increasingly void of it. The characters defy their own stories by trying to take control of how it is told to others all while appearing to forget how to live their life in the first place. Like I said, hard to describe. It is a light and enjoyable book.
March 16, 2015
The end was infuriating and a bit predictable (in a good way) but this could definitely be a Blockbuster. This book was written in a way to be pretty timeless, minus the perms. Cell phones and social media were not missed.
June 5, 2007
So, so fun. Read all her books, but start with this one.
February 22, 2011
This was also in the California section of Book Lust. I was still gorked on pain pills, but I liked this one about the indie movie industry.
May 26, 2015
I quit on page 60. This book seemed to be trying too hard- the author wanted it to be maniacally funny, but it just came off as maniacal. It seemed like a rip-off of Get Shorty to me. Blah.
January 15, 2015
Left me cold...characters, plot...blah.
February 16, 2015
This book was written 22 years ago and has held up very well. I really thought it would be more dated than it was. I think there is a lot of hilarious truth there!
Want to read
April 27, 2016A documentary filmmaker and her longtime collaborator drift toward marriage then veer off when they return to Hollywood and are distracted--she by her ex-flame, he by a mega-buck deal.
June 22, 2016
Enjoyed it a lot, but want to re-read now that I live in LA too!
October 24, 2016
Did not finish.
February 18, 2025
Funny and charming book, always good for a reread!
December 29, 2014
A very funny book!
May 16, 2015
very funny! a story about sisters and Hollywood, made me laugh out loud! (but it's not fluffy.)
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews