Luces en la ciudad: Ricos. Bellos. Malditos.

by Daisy Waugh

En el ardiente verano de 1929, Hollywood está en pleno apogeo y todo el mundo cree tener derecho a hacer realidad el sueño americano. Los Beecham, una pareja de actores sofisticada, elegante y encantadora, y miembros destacados de la elite social, ya lo han conseguido. Pero detrás de esta apariencia, Maximilian y Eleanor Beecham se encuentran al borde del divorcio y, tras afrontar varios fracasos en la gran pantalla, sus finanzas penden de un hilo. Muy pocos conocen su verdadera historia, aquella que empezó cuando eran dos jóvenes llegados del este de Europa. Entonces se llamaban Matz y Eleana y compartían un apartamento en Nueva York con muchos otros desdichados... Y muy pocos saben el terrible secreto que está destruyendo el gran amor que un día les unió.
A punto de caer en el abismo económico, son invitados a una fiesta dominada por el glamour, el escándalo y la decadencia, que podría ser decisiva para su futuro. Pero deberán tomar una decisión: ¿lo sacrificarán todo por la famay la fortuna o aprenderán a amarse otra vez?

«Brillante, absorbente y épica.»
Daily Mail

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Book Club

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Davida Chazan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Max and Eleanor Beecham seem the perfect couple. But their dark past still haunts them both, and it is tearing them apart. You can read my revised review of this historical fiction novel about Hollywood's secrets and pasts here https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2015/05/1...

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also posted here: http://lilmissvixreads.blogspot.co.uk

'Rich. Beautiful. Damned.'

The obvious reference in the tagline to F.Scott Fitzgerald, and the glamourous setting of old Hollywood is what drew me to this novel; I have a current obsession with the 1920's and it seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Eleanor and Max Beecham are married Hollywood actors, fast becoming veterans of the business. Wall Street is teetering on the edge, as are their careers and their marriage.

Upon starting the novel I was disappointed, it took me a long time to get into it, and even then I would set it aside in favour of other books. So there it sat only a quarter read for weeks until I decided to dedicate a day to finishing it. I have to say that I'm glad I gave it another chance! From Chapter 12 we gradually begin to learn more of Max and Eleanor's past, and the more I learnt, the more I began to empathise with them. Matz, a socialist, and his girlfriend Elena who works on the sewing machines at Triangle Shirtwaist Company are a world away from the Hollywood icons that they have become, with their empty house and their emotionally empty lives.

The section detailing the fire in the Triangle factory provided a stark and grotesque contrast to the excesses of Hollywood; indeed the novel reads almost like two completely different stories intertwined, but that's the point. Matz and Elena have transformed their lives beyond recognition, yet it is debatable as to whether this change was for the better; their life before was primitive, squalid even, but at least it was real. Hollywood glamour is as fake as it's films, and to save their marriage Max and Eleanor must return to their past.

One thing I would advise with this novel is to completely disregard the blurb; the 'legendary house party' it advertises takes up little more than the final chapter of the book and it fails to mention what is perhaps the most interesting part of the book - the back story of Elena and Matz and how they worked their way up from the gutter to Hollywood stardom.

The English graduate in me is compelled to point out the many typos that ruined parts of the novel to the point where I am unsure if the final sentence of the novel is a subtle plot twist (you'd have to be paying attention to spot it) or a glaring error that should have been picked up on in editing. Another reviewer has also pointed out that the newspaper clipping included at the end of the novel has been misdated by eighteen years (the fire was in 1911 not 1929), and it is the details like this that should have been checked prior to publishing.

3/5 stars: Unexpectedly poignant, fans of the Jazz Age will not be disappointed by this tale of Hollywood's golden couple as they delve into the past, peeling away the layers of pretence and learning to love each other again.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find it as evocative as it would like to think, although it was an okay read. Glad for the twist at the end; I would've been quite annoyed if it had gone where I thought it was going! I think I would've liked more about the couple's relationship and the effect of the crash, but the description of the fire and way she incorporated it into the story was quite good.

[Miz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy and entertaining story to read, with a satisfying ending. Just a bit disappointed with the continuous grammatical errors and typos throughout the book, which spoilt it a bit.

[Candy · Rating 2 out of 5]

just couldnt get into this book :(

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm afraid I have given up on this one. It's as dull as dishwater and I just can't get into it at all.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author manages to pull off a convincing blend of real-life and fictional Hollywood royalty on the cusp of the sound era with the setting and all the characters convincing and clearly recognisable (even tiny cameos like Buster Keaton and Natalie Talmadge). She also manages to evoke the very different world of the New York slums at the turn of the century, with its overcrowded mass of immigrants and industrial discontent, and the complacent suburbia of Reno. I'm just not sure all the various components hang together as a whole; the stock market crash barely needs to be in the book at all, the private detective seems to serve only as an excuse for Eleanor to narrate her backstory to the reader, Max feels like a completely different character from Matz the musician and union organiser, and I don't really get a sense of the creative triumvirate that is supposed to have existed between Butch, Max and Eleanor in the past.

I think the author may have got carried away with the thoroughness of her historical research and perhaps tried to put in too much. A good deal of this is very good, but in retrospect the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and I'm not sure the 'looking for a lost daughter' plot is enough to pull it all coherently together.

[Marthabethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book.
It is set mostly during 1929 in the USA, whilst also jumping around the 1910s, both eras which I am familiar with due to studying history at school. I felt the author captured the settings of each place and time well and the juxtaposition between 1929 Hollywood & the Lower east side of NYC in the 1910s was represented well.
I liked how the story unfolded through different narratives running at different times and how more details were slowly revealed.
I liked seeing the past of the main characters and how this led them to their present, and I loved the ending and the hopeful look into the future.

[Saba · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this one. It was an easy read but at the same, I didn’t really love any of the characters. The parts dealing with the glitz and glam of Hollywood were a drag for me to read. But at the same time, the New York backstory was intriguing and painful to read. There were way too many grammatical errors in this book though which are always a let down.

[emmakicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gillade den här boken och fastnade för den ganska direkt. Kanske hade den blivit en femma om den hållit hela vägen men den tappade lite på slutet. Spännande utan att vara en deckare och jag ville läsa mer och mer.

[Okidoki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Överraskar. Hon kan skriva, barnbarn till Evelyn Waugh.

[Allie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It starts slow and is particularly obfuscating at times, mentioning things that we don't understand until later on in the book. It would make a second reading interesting at any rate.

[Itziar Olóriz · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for an easy to read novel, this is it! Loved the story and the way it unfolds

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2⭐=Below Average.
Audio.

Well... the beginning was okay. The end was lovely and the middle was not great at all and boredom set in.

[H. Daley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit depressing but the second half had a better pace.

[Amayaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

No me atrapó mucho

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was captivated by the cover of Melting the Snow on Hester Street browsing in Reader’s Feast, Melbourne. I still haven’t got out of my craze for 20’s era fiction, and I loved the way the cover tagline referenced F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. The blurb suggested the book was about the last golden days of Hollywood, before the great stock market crash of 1929. It’s definitely about that, but so much more. The book also goes into great detail about New York life in the early 1900s and one of the worst industrial disasters in history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Why is this not mentioned on the back? This would be even more likely to draw my interest, as it was only mentioned briefly in another book I recently read, Astor Place Vintage.

So what is this book really about? We open with a scene between Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies, discussing a party to be held at the house of the famous Beecham couple. Max is a noted director and Eleanor is a leading lady actress of both silent and ‘talkie’ films. We start to suspect something might be wrong during the party, as both Max and Eleanor’s lovers attend and there’s a few sticky moments. The day after, Eleanor heads for Reno after receiving a letter in the post – but it’s not divorce she’s after. We then move back in time to a cold, hungry New York and find out how the Beechams got to be the toast of Hollywood. All around them, their dreams are crumbling as the market falls…

I really enjoyed the narrative of this story. Waugh weaves the past and present very well together – I loved how the excess of the 1920s contrasts with the poverty of earlier New York. The description of the Triangle fire was also brilliantly done – it was difficult to read at times, so harrowing were the accounts of the people trying to leave the burning floors. The narrative also moved along at a good pace that maintained my interest to keep reading…and reading! The characters are well drawn, especially Eleanor, who has a cool reserve that only melts as she discusses her time in New York. As I learned more about her, I became more sympathetic towards her. She hasn’t had an easy life, but she needs to hide it in glamorous Hollywood.

I felt that the wonderful story was let down by typos and spelling errors – note that I read a final copy, not an ARC. There are continual references to a rubbish ‘shoot’ first on page 168 – then on page 283 it starts off as a ‘chute’ but changes to a ‘shoot’ in the following sentence. Similarly, there is confusion between ‘principle’ and ‘principal’ on page 222. I’m sure that the gentleman concerned didn’t want to ‘stand on a principal’. (Ouch!) There’s also a picture of The World newspaper after the Triangle fire with the heading, ‘The World newspaper, 1929’ – the Triangle fire was in 1911. These are basic errors and in my opinion, should have been noted corrected before the final print.

I felt these issues lessened my enjoyment in the ending – I’m not sure how ambiguous the person in the big reveal was meant to be. Are we meant to believe it’s the person that everyone thinks it is or someone else? I felt I couldn’t trust the description of them to make a calculated judgement. However, it brought life and love back into Eleanor and Max’s lives, which is a lovely thing.

A very interesting story, told well.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[Tripfiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

The roaring twenties... The era of Gatsby..... Art Deco....There are a surprising number of novels around at the moment which chart through fiction the life of the people who flooded into America from Europe, especially into New York City and we have picked a couple of novels that really bring the era and city to life.

Melting the Snow on Hester Street absolutely brings the era of early 20th Century America to life, the era of the Great Gatsby and the polarisation of wealth, the seamy side of the garment district in New York, the burgeoning wealth of Hollywood.. essentially two very different ends of the spectrum.

The main storyline is cradled at the beginning and end by scenes in which Marion (the paramour of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst) is discussing with Charlie (Chaplin, of course) the context of a letter she has received from someone not known to her personally. This is Santa Monica of the late 1920s. Enter Max and Eleanor Beecham, married couple, and waning stars of the silver screen who find themselves at the heart of the social whirl that is Hollywood.... Valentino, Garbo, Kennedy and more glamour chararcters pepper the plot as it moves back and forth in time, from Hollywood back to New York; a period when times were truly hard for the immigrants, the so-called green horns, who were arriving daily from Europe in search of work.

The early part of the story is based on a true event in 1911 and it vividly portrays the struggle of the people living around the Hester Street of the title, both before and after that event. The people have uprooted themselves from Europe, settled into their new surroundings and taken up the threads of a new life - and though the reader may want to learn more about their personal motivations for leaving everything behind, nothing is revealed. This echoes the new-found rootlessness of the immigrants who can only afford to look forward, and never yearn for what was. Like them, the reader has to confront the here and now, the past is blank.

This book bowls along and superbly brings the feel of the Roaring Twenties to life, both its peachy glamour, and its tawdry poverty, and makes for an absorbing read.

The structure of the book - for example when Eleanor (or Eleana as she is by then known) tells her story to a private investigator - can, at times feel a little contrived, a device to inform the reader of the backstory, nevertheless the story itself is grippingly told. And the ending doesn't come together so well... would someone write to a famous person out of the blue, based on a vague premise, and then actually get a response? Hard to tell.

A small number of typos and errors in our copy of Melting the Snow on Hester Street were an unwelcome distraction.

[Erika Lindblom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Den här boken tyckte jag riktigt mycket om. Jag älskar gammalt Hollywood-skvaller och har får jag verkligen mitt lystmäte. Det viskas, skvallras, bedras, hatas och älskas. Särskilt underhållande var de amerikanska huvudkaraktärernas bild av Greta Garbo som osocial, bångstyrig och egensinnig. Boken består dock inte bara av skvaller utan har en djupare dimension som kontrasterar mot Hollywoods ytlighet. Författaren väver skickligt ihop dessa två verkligheter, och hon har en skärpa och ett driv i språket som gör den omöjlig att lägga ifrån sig. Dessutom innehåller den flera historiska händelser som inte bara gör boken underhållande utan även lärorik. Dessvärre tyckte jag dock att slutet kom lite väl plötsligt och den tvist som presenterades genomskådade jag redan i början av boken. Trots det är Och snön smälter på Hester Street den bästa bok som jag har läst i år.

https://erikalindblom.wordpress.com/2...

[Saffron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, this is nothing like the Great Gatsby, the only thing that links the two books is the time scale in the Hollywood section of the story. Secondly, the front cover is misleading to the content, this is not a full on story of glitz and glamour. I would say this is more a story of desperation and desolation.

However, after saying all that, the book is far more intelligent and engaging a read than I was expecting, the New York story felt real and you could feel the deprivation and despair in the lives of the characters, that part of the story was far more interesting than the Hollywood era. The setting of black Thursday was interesting and the addition of famous names such as Charlie Chaplain and Greta Garbo added a nice flavour of the era as a backdrop.

All in all, I enjoyed it and did learn a bit too, so well worth the read.

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it hard to read books that use 'real' people (famous) who have lived previously such as Charlie Chapman. It causes me to cringe at how some authors have them speak and use their body language - I find it more believable to read about fictional characters who are easier to associate with and visualise.
Having said that; this book was enjoyable and the story line was pleasant enough. The amount of drama and suspense was adequate and the characters likeable. The era is what attracted me to this book in the first place and it was interesting to learn how some people reacted to the threat of the stock market crash.

[Marguerite Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fell a bit flat for me. It was an interesting story, and there was a lot of story, but there wasn't actually much character, and what there was - it wasn't so much that I disliked them, but I found them self-indulgent and most definitely un-empathetic (if there is such a word) despite their very traumatic past. I did zip through it mind you, as I said, it's a good story, but I also did guess the ending too - it was rather too well-sign-posted. I would have enjoyed this more if the relationship between Max and Eleanor had been more on-stage together rather than told in retrospect.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not entirely what I expected. The Hollywood stars were all there, with all their decadence and secrets, as indicated on the blurb. But the story about one star, who had particular secrets drew us away from Hollywood that I enjoyed and was not expecting. It did take me a while to settle into the rhythm of the writing, which annoyed me at the beginning but the story drew me in. I had to keep reading to find out what happened.

[Culture Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.culturestreet.com/post/mel...

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absorbing.

[Jane Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a while to get into this book but I then wanted to know what happened. Quite liked how it went forwards and backwards in time. Enjoyed the plot.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic story. kept me turning the pages right until the end. I enjoyed this well researched book very much.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lättläst och fantasieggande berättelse, om människans förmåga - eller oförmåga - att omskapa sig själv, att berätta en ny berättelse om sig själv, och vilka fälleben det kan sätta för oss.

[Apurva · Rating 3 out of 5]

A timid little book filled with the overflowing riches and glamour of the golden age of Hollywood. It contains the decadence of this culture with the market crash, but also a new beginning..

[Emily Merton · Rating 5 out of 5]

i LOVED this book! i couldnt put it down... and then that twist at the end. brilliant