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Mercury Pictures Presents
The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles 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 life from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, 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.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work the Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles 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 life from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, 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.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work the Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”
594 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 19, 2022
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42104 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Marra
18 books2,427 followersAnthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 2,033 reviews
September 2, 2022
Reel People of the Real War
“Mercury Pictures Presents” is a five star triumph. It is a rich and complex story, deep in characterization, yet there is no lagging, no time when you think exposition has created a slow detour. Everyday people populate the pages, people who have their hands full just dealing with the events the world is forcing on them.
The Mercury Pictures movie studio is a second-tier Hollywood outfit struggling to get by in the years just before World War II. We open on an amazing cast of characters from the studio head to the actors and the crew– mostly recent immigrants from Europe. These people have left their homes behind, loved ones and stories of regret only ever-present memories.
Anthony Marra takes us back to their European roots and fills us in on the reasons which tore them away. There are very real ghosts carried to America–ghosts living or dead who echo the guilt of those who abandoned them. No matter that most departed because of fascist persecution, there is always someone left behind.
Cutting back to America, there are punishments for the original sin of owning roots in countries on the wrong side of the war’s breakout. Italians, Germans, Asians of all nationalities are treated with suspicion and are subjected to restrictions on travel and employment. It is time to stay in the shadows.
The hard times here are tempered with a wealth of humor. The wise-cracking studio founder, Artie Feldman, is a character the Coen brothers could do wonders with. He has six toupees mounted on mannequins in his office, each a larger size than the previous one, each with a different name and personality. His assistant, Maria Lagana, is the unrecognized and underappreciated strategist keeping things afloat. She lives with her colorful old world great-aunts who are hysterical in their eccentricities. An example is the description of their reverence of patron saints. The saints are each represented by a small figurine the aunts pray to when something is needed. If the prayers seem unanswered or slow in fulfillment, little hints will show up– perhaps a threatening hammer will be left casually beside the figure as incentive.
On the flip side, this is a time of war and there are frightening reminders of the horrible mindset we are dealing with. The armed forces went to a great deal of trouble designing and testing a bombing pattern which could efficiently suck firestorms through heavily populated civilian areas. Hollywood’s talent lent their skills to designing actual scale reproductions of Berlin neighborhoods. The goal was mass destruction, the maximum body count. We are reminded that during low-altitude bombing runs over Japanese and German cities our pilots wore insectile oxygen masks to avoid passing out from the smell of burning human flesh. And these are the good guys.
The World War II era comes alive in this novel, not just the fighting itself, but the blanket effect it had on everyone. Marra’s perceptive portrayal of everyday characters draws us into the lives of people struggling to find a foothold in a world which has collapsed on itself. Initially I thought this would make a great movie– but I doubt a film could do it justice and I will be content to keep a hold on these characters through these pages. Hmmm… maybe the Coen brothers…
Thank you Random House Publishing Group, Hogarth Books, and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #MercuryPicturesPresents #NetGalley.
“Mercury Pictures Presents” is a five star triumph. It is a rich and complex story, deep in characterization, yet there is no lagging, no time when you think exposition has created a slow detour. Everyday people populate the pages, people who have their hands full just dealing with the events the world is forcing on them.
The Mercury Pictures movie studio is a second-tier Hollywood outfit struggling to get by in the years just before World War II. We open on an amazing cast of characters from the studio head to the actors and the crew– mostly recent immigrants from Europe. These people have left their homes behind, loved ones and stories of regret only ever-present memories.
Anthony Marra takes us back to their European roots and fills us in on the reasons which tore them away. There are very real ghosts carried to America–ghosts living or dead who echo the guilt of those who abandoned them. No matter that most departed because of fascist persecution, there is always someone left behind.
Cutting back to America, there are punishments for the original sin of owning roots in countries on the wrong side of the war’s breakout. Italians, Germans, Asians of all nationalities are treated with suspicion and are subjected to restrictions on travel and employment. It is time to stay in the shadows.
The hard times here are tempered with a wealth of humor. The wise-cracking studio founder, Artie Feldman, is a character the Coen brothers could do wonders with. He has six toupees mounted on mannequins in his office, each a larger size than the previous one, each with a different name and personality. His assistant, Maria Lagana, is the unrecognized and underappreciated strategist keeping things afloat. She lives with her colorful old world great-aunts who are hysterical in their eccentricities. An example is the description of their reverence of patron saints. The saints are each represented by a small figurine the aunts pray to when something is needed. If the prayers seem unanswered or slow in fulfillment, little hints will show up– perhaps a threatening hammer will be left casually beside the figure as incentive.
On the flip side, this is a time of war and there are frightening reminders of the horrible mindset we are dealing with. The armed forces went to a great deal of trouble designing and testing a bombing pattern which could efficiently suck firestorms through heavily populated civilian areas. Hollywood’s talent lent their skills to designing actual scale reproductions of Berlin neighborhoods. The goal was mass destruction, the maximum body count. We are reminded that during low-altitude bombing runs over Japanese and German cities our pilots wore insectile oxygen masks to avoid passing out from the smell of burning human flesh. And these are the good guys.
The World War II era comes alive in this novel, not just the fighting itself, but the blanket effect it had on everyone. Marra’s perceptive portrayal of everyday characters draws us into the lives of people struggling to find a foothold in a world which has collapsed on itself. Initially I thought this would make a great movie– but I doubt a film could do it justice and I will be content to keep a hold on these characters through these pages. Hmmm… maybe the Coen brothers…
Thank you Random House Publishing Group, Hogarth Books, and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #MercuryPicturesPresents #NetGalley.
May 2, 2022
Marra’s first novel , A Constellation of Vital Phenomena focuses on the Chechen War with Russia and perhaps is more relevant at this point in time as it is reminiscent of the horrific treatment that the people of Ukraine are experiencing now. However, this novel is a story about a different war, which also captures the effect of war on the people who live or sometimes die through the circumstances of that war. It’s also from the unique perspective of Hollywood, which I don’t remember encountering in all of the WWII novels I’ve read.
In the years just before WWII, Maria Lagana and her mother make it to the US from Rome after her father is arrested for anti fascist activities. In Hollywood, Maria stakes her claim to a job as assistant producer at a movie studio. Through Maria, we meet a cast of characters, several of whom are immigrants like her. Their lives as well as back stories serve to create plot lines which at times seem a bit all over the place. But, there is a cohesiveness here of emotional connection between the characters, that comes together. It’s with the backdrop of Hollywood, the “Enemy Alien” status of Maria, Eddie Lu, the Chinese actor she loves, Anna Weber, a German miniaturist, there are heartbreaking ramifications. While this is extremely sad for the most part, I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as it was at times with some larger than life characters.
So much relevance. This is a story of how war impacts the lives of people caught in the time and place. I can’t say that I loved it as much as A Constellation of Vital Phenomena or Marra’s story collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno. However, this is certainly worth reading. It would make a terrific movie.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Hogarth/Random House through NetGalley
In the years just before WWII, Maria Lagana and her mother make it to the US from Rome after her father is arrested for anti fascist activities. In Hollywood, Maria stakes her claim to a job as assistant producer at a movie studio. Through Maria, we meet a cast of characters, several of whom are immigrants like her. Their lives as well as back stories serve to create plot lines which at times seem a bit all over the place. But, there is a cohesiveness here of emotional connection between the characters, that comes together. It’s with the backdrop of Hollywood, the “Enemy Alien” status of Maria, Eddie Lu, the Chinese actor she loves, Anna Weber, a German miniaturist, there are heartbreaking ramifications. While this is extremely sad for the most part, I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as it was at times with some larger than life characters.
So much relevance. This is a story of how war impacts the lives of people caught in the time and place. I can’t say that I loved it as much as A Constellation of Vital Phenomena or Marra’s story collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno. However, this is certainly worth reading. It would make a terrific movie.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Hogarth/Random House through NetGalley
August 17, 2022
I adore Marra and his masterfully skilled writing.
It’s the 1940’s. Immigrants have arrived to LA from pre war Europe. Movies become the propaganda for the war.
At the centre, the story of Maria. An immigrant herself from Italy. Her reflection on a disastrous mistake haunting her through life.
The characters are brilliant. A miniaturist; a man of toupees; a photographer who takes the persona of another. The story is humorous and sobering as the European war begins to rage. The racism and sexism surrounding these emigrants and the ridicule they faced. Shameful.
A bit long and the stories were a bit messy but did upright themselves. My favourite will remain A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
4⭐️
It’s the 1940’s. Immigrants have arrived to LA from pre war Europe. Movies become the propaganda for the war.
At the centre, the story of Maria. An immigrant herself from Italy. Her reflection on a disastrous mistake haunting her through life.
The characters are brilliant. A miniaturist; a man of toupees; a photographer who takes the persona of another. The story is humorous and sobering as the European war begins to rage. The racism and sexism surrounding these emigrants and the ridicule they faced. Shameful.
A bit long and the stories were a bit messy but did upright themselves. My favourite will remain A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
4⭐️
June 14, 2022
Anthony Marra weaves a magical and spellbinding piece of historical fiction set in the 1940s era of the movie business in Los Angeles and the rise of fascism and WW2 in Europe. The beauty, wit and lyricism of his prose shines as he atmospherically evokes a group of European emigres, exiles employed by Mercury Pictures, run by the man of many toupees, Artie Feldman, and his able assistant, the ambitious Maria Lagana. Maria has escaped Mussolini's Italy with her mother, her anti-fascist, defense lawyer father, Giuseppe, left behind facing political internment in San Lorenzo in circumstances that leave Maria bearing a burden of shameful guilt for which she refuses to accept any form of forgiveness. She and her mother live with her unforgettable great-aunts, the widows Mimi, Lala and Pep Moriburo, for whom love, a venereal disease of the heart, is curable through marriage.
With Mercury Pictures under financial pressures, Artie has been summoned to face the Senate investigation, accompanied by the ever reliable Maria. Maria is in love with a Chinese American actor, Eddie Lu, condemned to playing stereotypes that bring him real life dangers. A glimpse of Germany in the inter-war years is provided by the miniaturist Anna Weber, devastated by the loss of her son, Kurt, when her Nazi husband is given custody. In San Lorenzo, portrait photographer, Nino Picone, escapes, arriving in LA with a stolen identity. With Pearl Harbour and the American entry into WW2, the fortunes of Mercury Pictures change dramatically as they make morale boosting war propaganda, but the emigres are designated enemy aliens, made to feel unworthy and unwanted. Anna heads to Utah, with her miniaturist talents being utilised by the American military. The characters lives intersect and connect as we learn of their pasts, present and sometimes their future.
Marra captures this fascinating period of history with its culture, politics and economics, with his blend of fact and fiction, of a Hollywood revered for its ability to manipulate, create fantasies and fabricate narratives for a public all to willing to believe, a gift recognised by the American military in WW2 as they employ Mercury Pictures to create war fiction. The role played by European immigrants in the film industry is tenderly conveyed through the larger than life and vibrant, complex characters that Marra imagines and develops in his heartbreaking, poignant, and joyous storytelling that beguiles. It touches on sacrifice, imperfect love, loss, family, identity, belonging, guilt, ambition and resilience. This is a stellar read, a wondrous novel with oodles of humour that I did not want to end, and which I think will appeal to many readers. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
With Mercury Pictures under financial pressures, Artie has been summoned to face the Senate investigation, accompanied by the ever reliable Maria. Maria is in love with a Chinese American actor, Eddie Lu, condemned to playing stereotypes that bring him real life dangers. A glimpse of Germany in the inter-war years is provided by the miniaturist Anna Weber, devastated by the loss of her son, Kurt, when her Nazi husband is given custody. In San Lorenzo, portrait photographer, Nino Picone, escapes, arriving in LA with a stolen identity. With Pearl Harbour and the American entry into WW2, the fortunes of Mercury Pictures change dramatically as they make morale boosting war propaganda, but the emigres are designated enemy aliens, made to feel unworthy and unwanted. Anna heads to Utah, with her miniaturist talents being utilised by the American military. The characters lives intersect and connect as we learn of their pasts, present and sometimes their future.
Marra captures this fascinating period of history with its culture, politics and economics, with his blend of fact and fiction, of a Hollywood revered for its ability to manipulate, create fantasies and fabricate narratives for a public all to willing to believe, a gift recognised by the American military in WW2 as they employ Mercury Pictures to create war fiction. The role played by European immigrants in the film industry is tenderly conveyed through the larger than life and vibrant, complex characters that Marra imagines and develops in his heartbreaking, poignant, and joyous storytelling that beguiles. It touches on sacrifice, imperfect love, loss, family, identity, belonging, guilt, ambition and resilience. This is a stellar read, a wondrous novel with oodles of humour that I did not want to end, and which I think will appeal to many readers. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
August 15, 2022
Ahh, this is hard to rate - my experience ranged from 2 to 5 stars. It is a fine mess of a novel, beautifully written with memorable characters. If only Marra hadn't felt the need to spend pages on every minor character. I wonder if he started this as linked short stories and then decided to combine it into one big overflowing stew. I resented it when he left Maria to present yet another sidekick's story. On the other hand, I loved parts of this book! And many strands did come together. Marra says so much about the impact of the war on a family, being a woman in the movie business, about being an Italian immigrant, about being Asian in Hollywood in the 1940s. It is studded with brilliance.
August 25, 2022
Mercury Pictures Presents is a different sort of historical fiction. Taking as its subject a B film movie studio, it introduces the reader to a wide range of characters. Foremost is Maria, an Italian emigre who has risen from secretary to associate producer. The story goes back and forth in time, back and forth across the Atlantic. We learn of her father, imprisoned by Mussolini, and the young man he befriends.
The story takes its time introducing us to the other emigres who find themselves employed by Mercury Pictures. The plot meanders. At times it meanders too much and I really didn’t need every single character’s back story.
The humor here ranges from the dry to the broad. But there’s also so much sadness. The focus is much more on the characters than on the story. The writing is expressive. Marra gets certain things. “His politics were prejudices in search of policies.” In fact, some of Marra’s best points concern prejudice and the bigots’ willingness to believe anything that bolsters their prejudices. “It wasn’t Odette’s easy slide into prejudice that unsettled Maria so much as the suspension of disbelief it suggested. It was as if reality took the crooked shape of the mind in which it was poured. What gave conspiracy the credibility that reasonable explanation lacked? What hunger for order, even diabolical order, did it satisfy?”
This gave me my first glimpse into what was transpiring on the US West coast right after Pearl Harbor, not to mention how the film industry was used by the government. As the story goes on, at times there’s almost a hallucinatory quality to the story.
Overall, this was a good mix of entertainment, historic fact and deeper themes. It made for a great audio experience. Carlotta Brentan was a very good narrator.
The story takes its time introducing us to the other emigres who find themselves employed by Mercury Pictures. The plot meanders. At times it meanders too much and I really didn’t need every single character’s back story.
The humor here ranges from the dry to the broad. But there’s also so much sadness. The focus is much more on the characters than on the story. The writing is expressive. Marra gets certain things. “His politics were prejudices in search of policies.” In fact, some of Marra’s best points concern prejudice and the bigots’ willingness to believe anything that bolsters their prejudices. “It wasn’t Odette’s easy slide into prejudice that unsettled Maria so much as the suspension of disbelief it suggested. It was as if reality took the crooked shape of the mind in which it was poured. What gave conspiracy the credibility that reasonable explanation lacked? What hunger for order, even diabolical order, did it satisfy?”
This gave me my first glimpse into what was transpiring on the US West coast right after Pearl Harbor, not to mention how the film industry was used by the government. As the story goes on, at times there’s almost a hallucinatory quality to the story.
Overall, this was a good mix of entertainment, historic fact and deeper themes. It made for a great audio experience. Carlotta Brentan was a very good narrator.
July 6, 2022
I picked this book up because I recognized the author from earlier books. With the cover Mercuryt Pictures Presents, I thought it would be a story about the movie studio and the movie business. And it was to an extent. Regardless of what I expected (I should have read the blurb so I would have known - duh), the story was mostly about people who were cast together during World War II and their circumstances. Mostly about Maria Lagana, who left Italy during Mussolini's rule and her father's prison interment, and came to Los Angeles with her mother. Maria has a huge amount of guilt for her actions that caused her father's arrest.
My favorite parts of the book were Nico Piccone's story and Anna, the miniaturist's story.
I'm seeing a lot of five-star reviews and I'm sure the critics will love this book. Unfortunately, I can only give it three. The writing is beautiful and lyrical and the stories of the people who worked at Mercury Pictures were interesting. However, mostly I was bored and wanted the book to end. There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary padding that to me, seemed irrelevant.
Thanks to Random House, Hogarth through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on August 2, 2022.
My favorite parts of the book were Nico Piccone's story and Anna, the miniaturist's story.
I'm seeing a lot of five-star reviews and I'm sure the critics will love this book. Unfortunately, I can only give it three. The writing is beautiful and lyrical and the stories of the people who worked at Mercury Pictures were interesting. However, mostly I was bored and wanted the book to end. There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary padding that to me, seemed irrelevant.
Thanks to Random House, Hogarth through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on August 2, 2022.
August 9, 2022
It's been six years since publication of Anthony Marra's last book, and finally the wait is over. With Mercury Pictures Presents, he carries the themes and style he'd honed in his two earlier masterpieces, and has created another. I'd thought the WWII era had been so thoroughly milked that further reworking would be redundant, but Marra has breathed life into a story centered around the collection of emigres attracted to Los Angeles and their contribution not only to the movie industry, but to the cultural enhancement of the country as well.
As with his earlier books, there is a large interlocking cast, but what he does so well is give life to even the participants occupying the smallest page count, like the bit players he is honoring. One of his strongest trademarks, the human connection, is a feature of all his plotlines. By playing the long game with his characters, he establishes threads that transcend time and distance against seemingly impossible odds, with satisfactory outcomes, not always expected or happy, but satisfactory nonetheless. I'm reluctant to provide any quotes since it would be hard to choose, but despite it being so early, this will be my favorite book of the year.
As with his earlier books, there is a large interlocking cast, but what he does so well is give life to even the participants occupying the smallest page count, like the bit players he is honoring. One of his strongest trademarks, the human connection, is a feature of all his plotlines. By playing the long game with his characters, he establishes threads that transcend time and distance against seemingly impossible odds, with satisfactory outcomes, not always expected or happy, but satisfactory nonetheless. I'm reluctant to provide any quotes since it would be hard to choose, but despite it being so early, this will be my favorite book of the year.
August 11, 2022
2 😴 😴
I was wowed big time by Marra's previous novels.
At 50% in I'm struggling to maintain interest in this one.
So I phoned two friends for answers via their reviews and I quote:
Angela's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) ★★★★: "Their lives as well as back stories serve to create plot lines which at times seem a bit all over the place"
Britany's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) 2 ★★ "I think it was too much of a slog to get through. I wasn't excited to pick it back up"
which gave me the little push I needed to make the decision to return this to my beloved library where some other deserving patron can snap it up.
I no longer have the patience with stories where authors whiplash me all over the place and cram in too many story-lines taking too long to come together in the end. No doubt many out there will tell me it's worth it when that end finally arrives, but I have too many book miles to go before I sleep and I'm weary of looking at the remaining page count.
Thankful for my Goodreads friends❣️
I was wowed big time by Marra's previous novels.
At 50% in I'm struggling to maintain interest in this one.
So I phoned two friends for answers via their reviews and I quote:
Angela's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) ★★★★: "Their lives as well as back stories serve to create plot lines which at times seem a bit all over the place"
Britany's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) 2 ★★ "I think it was too much of a slog to get through. I wasn't excited to pick it back up"
which gave me the little push I needed to make the decision to return this to my beloved library where some other deserving patron can snap it up.
I no longer have the patience with stories where authors whiplash me all over the place and cram in too many story-lines taking too long to come together in the end. No doubt many out there will tell me it's worth it when that end finally arrives, but I have too many book miles to go before I sleep and I'm weary of looking at the remaining page count.
Thankful for my Goodreads friends❣️
July 26, 2022
Anthony Marra labors under the most benevolent curse that can befall a writer: When he was 28 years old, he published “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” an astonishingly great debut novel. Manipulating time and tone with hypnotic effect, sweeping from tragic to absurd with majestic ease, Marra told the stories of folks caught in a war-torn Chechen village. “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” won the inaugural John Leonard Prize for Best First Book from the National Book Critics Circle, and raves piled up around the novel like ticker tape.
Now, almost a decade later, Marra has published his second novel, a story set before and during World War II called “Mercury Pictures Presents.” The author’s fans, who include former president Barack Obama, will recognize his elegant resolution of tangled disasters, his heartbreaking poignancy, his eye for historical curiosities that exceed the parameters of fiction. But the emotional range here is narrower, the record of human cruelty more subtle. And if “Mercury Pictures Presents” doesn’t generate the impact of “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” well, that’s an impossibly high standard. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Now, almost a decade later, Marra has published his second novel, a story set before and during World War II called “Mercury Pictures Presents.” The author’s fans, who include former president Barack Obama, will recognize his elegant resolution of tangled disasters, his heartbreaking poignancy, his eye for historical curiosities that exceed the parameters of fiction. But the emotional range here is narrower, the record of human cruelty more subtle. And if “Mercury Pictures Presents” doesn’t generate the impact of “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” well, that’s an impossibly high standard. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
September 7, 2022
Devastatingly good. Haunting one moment, hilarious the next. Hollywood and Italy in the years before and during the Second World War are brought vividly to life, and Anthony Marra has given us the studio executives, the Italian immigrants in La-La Land, and the actors -- one of whom will break your heart. I devoured this novel and, speaking as a novelist, Marra's prestigious talents gave me one hell of an inferiority complex.
August 2, 2022
Maria Lagana leaves Italy for LA to work for Mercury Pictures working her way up to being the right hand to Artie Feldman- one half of the brother duo that owns the studio. It's 1940's in Europe and the war is looming.
Marra does a crafty job of creating characters that you want to root for, ones you want to hate, and ones that are deeply flawed. The characters slowly interact with each other, all of which end up connecting in a loose way. This didn't quite work for me. It's hard to explain exactly why, but I think it was too much of a slog to get through. I wasn't excited to pick it back up, I quickly discovered while I loved Maria's story, I was frustrated and downright bored by some of the other sections. I think there was too much shoved in the middle to get me from start to finish on what this author was trying to convey here. I do have some of his other books on my physical shelves and do plan to give them a try.
I loved the sections with Anna and the miniatures and the storyline with Nino and his passport collection. The small moments are really what wins in this book.
Thank You to Netgalley and Hogarth for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Marra does a crafty job of creating characters that you want to root for, ones you want to hate, and ones that are deeply flawed. The characters slowly interact with each other, all of which end up connecting in a loose way. This didn't quite work for me. It's hard to explain exactly why, but I think it was too much of a slog to get through. I wasn't excited to pick it back up, I quickly discovered while I loved Maria's story, I was frustrated and downright bored by some of the other sections. I think there was too much shoved in the middle to get me from start to finish on what this author was trying to convey here. I do have some of his other books on my physical shelves and do plan to give them a try.
I loved the sections with Anna and the miniatures and the storyline with Nino and his passport collection. The small moments are really what wins in this book.
Thank You to Netgalley and Hogarth for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
April 2, 2022
“Here, I have an idea.” In the lower right corner, under the Produced By credit, Artie crossed out the John in John Doe and wrote Jane. “Jane Doe. No one, and I mean no one, will have any doubt who Jane Doe really is. Satisfied?” Maria might have been had she not noticed the one non-anonymized name on the poster. It appeared right above the title, in small but legible cursive: Art Feldman and Mercury Pictures Presents …
I’m going to go with: It’s not the book, it’s me. Mercury Pictures Presents has plenty of five star reviews, and I have raved about author Anthony Marra’s work before, but this time? I was kind of bored; unmoved by the writing and unsurprised by the plot and its details. I have zero interest in stories about Hollywood and moviemaking, and I feel like everything important that can be said about WWII in fiction was written by the people who lived through it, and although there was the potential for something interesting about Hollywood propaganda drumming up fascistic control over those “resident aliens” who had fled rising fascism in their birth countries, it didn’t much pay off for me. Marra draws some fine characters, gives them some snappy lines, puts them in singular circumstances, and none of it really touched me. I acknowledge this failure to connect is on me; another reader’s experience may be totally different. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
“People like you and me, Art? The sons of furriers and cobblers and glovers who’ve been in the business since the battles with the Edison Trust? We came out here to build ourselves a broken kingdom where only the broken prosper, and then, our children, they hold it against us when we make them whole.”
Mercury Pictures is a small-time movie studio — owned and run by twin Jewish brothers who emigrated from Poland long before Hitler was a threat — and as America enters WWII, they hit it big with military training films and jingoistic agitprop created through their hastily assembled Propaganda Unit. The storyline of Mercury Pictures Presents follows the fortunes of this studio and the (mostly) immigrant artists who staff it. We see the fate of Italian antifascists who were sent into internal exile (confino) by Mussilini, unable to leave a certain radius within San Lorenzo. We then witness the fate of those antifascists who fled Italy or Germany ahead of WWII — forced to register as resident aliens when the US declared war on Europe, unable to travel beyond a two mile radius of their homes, subject to curfews and the confiscation of goods. We see expat German architects engaged to recreate Berlin in the Utah desert for the USAF to test incendiary bombs for use against the actual city (and this part may have been shocking if I hadn’t read about it recently in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia). We see a Chinese-American actor reduced to playing a caricature of a bellicose Japanese bogeyman (and the racism that he provokes in the role is so successful that he finds himself in danger on the streets of L.A.) There’s a goldmine of irony in the idea of Hollywood (and its German- and Italian-born immigrant artists) manufacturing the face of an enemy for the country to set its sights on — even more irony in the eventual McCarthy Hearings trying to root out those Hollywood Communists who had been antifascists “too early” — but while the elements of something interesting were here, I simply didn’t find it terribly engaging. A taste of the snappy writing:
• For years, Maria had devised strategies for smuggling the profane beneath the most sensitive censorial snouts. At her best, she passed more colorful bullshit than Babe the Blue Ox.
• Annunziata knew the bribes were wasted, but when you’re desperate, every open pocket is a wishing well.
• She was Rubenesque, and, like both painter and deli sandwich, irrefutable proof of Creation’s genius.
And there were many grasps at meaning-making:
A dark inkling deepens to certainty. This parched patch of Utah is indeed the farthest outpost of the Third Reich, alike in the immodesty of its vision and narrowness of its humanity.
But I think that, overall, this experience just confirms my disinterest in WWII novels. This was a fresh angle (I didn’t know about the confino before), and Marra has a large and colourful cast of characters intersect in complex ways, but the story didn’t surprise or move me. And I so don’t care about Hollywood that the setting neither charmed or intrigued me. And as mine seems to be a minority opinion, no one should take my word on this one.
December 19, 2022
Mercury Pictures Presents is complicated, rich and entertaining. It's also meandering, distant and hollow. I nearly shelved it around the 80-page mark, but dug in and finished. I'm glad to have read it, but was relieved when it ended.
This is an epic tale that begins in pre-WWII Italy and continues in wartime Los Angeles. It is the story of Maria Lagana, who flees Rome with her mother after her father is arrested by the Fascist regime. She rises from the typing pool to associate producer at Mercury Pictures, a B-movie studio with aspirations to play with the big boys at MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount. The studio execs, rival siblings Artie and Ned Feldman, don't let a shady deal pass them by and soon Artie is being called to testify before Congress for violating censorship protocol.
Anthony Marra's endnotes outlining the resources he consulted runs on for several pages. It's perhaps this devotion to detail that drags down the narrative: it is overripe with every conceivable character and period detail and lays down a noir wink-wink B-movie tone that is clever until it becomes annoying.
The novel's best parts are the flashbacks to Italy, where Maria's father plots his escape from exile, and the tender but fraught moments Maria shares with her mother and with her Chinese-American actor boyfriend, who is forever denied the roles he seems destined to play—a victim of Hollywood's raging racism. Anthony Marra, who blew this reader's mind with his 2013 novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon and the 2015 short story collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno is such a skilled writer, a magician of the narrative who is able to weave together the tiniest of details with the loftiest of themes with such wit and tenderness. His grace and passion shine in the novel's first half, but lose focus in the second half as the story meanders into too many side paths and into the lives of characters we're not very invested in.
This is clearly a labor of love for the author, but much could have been left on the cutting room floor to make it work for the reader.
This is an epic tale that begins in pre-WWII Italy and continues in wartime Los Angeles. It is the story of Maria Lagana, who flees Rome with her mother after her father is arrested by the Fascist regime. She rises from the typing pool to associate producer at Mercury Pictures, a B-movie studio with aspirations to play with the big boys at MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount. The studio execs, rival siblings Artie and Ned Feldman, don't let a shady deal pass them by and soon Artie is being called to testify before Congress for violating censorship protocol.
Anthony Marra's endnotes outlining the resources he consulted runs on for several pages. It's perhaps this devotion to detail that drags down the narrative: it is overripe with every conceivable character and period detail and lays down a noir wink-wink B-movie tone that is clever until it becomes annoying.
The novel's best parts are the flashbacks to Italy, where Maria's father plots his escape from exile, and the tender but fraught moments Maria shares with her mother and with her Chinese-American actor boyfriend, who is forever denied the roles he seems destined to play—a victim of Hollywood's raging racism. Anthony Marra, who blew this reader's mind with his 2013 novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon and the 2015 short story collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno is such a skilled writer, a magician of the narrative who is able to weave together the tiniest of details with the loftiest of themes with such wit and tenderness. His grace and passion shine in the novel's first half, but lose focus in the second half as the story meanders into too many side paths and into the lives of characters we're not very invested in.
This is clearly a labor of love for the author, but much could have been left on the cutting room floor to make it work for the reader.
August 17, 2022
Mercury Pictures Presents is a work of historical fiction set in the Italy of rising fascism between the wars. Then the action shifts to California in the late 1930s, more specifically Hollywood and the titular studio which is to become home to many in the flight from Hitler and Mussolini. While we are inside the sometimes manic everyday studio operations led by Artie Feldman, we are even closer to Maria Lagana who has traveled from a village in Italy to Hollywood with hopes, sorrows, delayed dreams, and lots of intelligence.
The concept of “other” carries through this novel. As war approaches in the States, there are good and bad, or enemy, aliens. Many of those who escaped from Europe and found a place in Hollywood and elsewhere are now looked at differently. Even before the war’s start, some groups aren’t really acceptable except for the B grade movies.
Marra’s characters are wonderfully drawn. I felt for them. They come from around the world and end up in Los Angeles, but more specifically Hollywood. Some become new people before they arrive, others after they meet new employers and realize what is wanted or needed. Even now, a few days after I finished reading, I can see some of these people in my mind’s eye: one at her desk or with Artie, another always with his camera, still another working on the miniatures, and last, a man I came to really like talking with Bela Lugosi about life in Hollywood.
I recommend this book to everyone. Have patience with the changes of points of view. It will all make sense in the end. People traveling through…
4.5 rounded to 5*
A copy of this book was provided by Hogarth/Random House through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
The concept of “other” carries through this novel. As war approaches in the States, there are good and bad, or enemy, aliens. Many of those who escaped from Europe and found a place in Hollywood and elsewhere are now looked at differently. Even before the war’s start, some groups aren’t really acceptable except for the B grade movies.
Marra’s characters are wonderfully drawn. I felt for them. They come from around the world and end up in Los Angeles, but more specifically Hollywood. Some become new people before they arrive, others after they meet new employers and realize what is wanted or needed. Even now, a few days after I finished reading, I can see some of these people in my mind’s eye: one at her desk or with Artie, another always with his camera, still another working on the miniatures, and last, a man I came to really like talking with Bela Lugosi about life in Hollywood.
I recommend this book to everyone. Have patience with the changes of points of view. It will all make sense in the end. People traveling through…
4.5 rounded to 5*
A copy of this book was provided by Hogarth/Random House through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
May 16, 2023
I loved this book. I loved the clever wit, how I laughed out loud. I loved the characters, warm and real, flawed, and memorable. This is genius writing, a sweeping historical novel that tackles big social and political issues, incorporating hard truths, and yet left me uplifted and hopeful.
Set in 1940s Hollywood, soon peopled with refugees from fascist Europe, it is the story of Maria whose socialist father was sentenced to internal exile in Mussolini’s Italy. She and her mother immigrated to America, and now she is associate producer at Mercury Pictures, underpaid and uncredited. Her boss Mercury studio founder Artie Feldman names his toupees and is mired in a never-ending battle over studio control with his twin brother. Maria loves a Chinese American, but miscegenation laws force them to keep their relationship under wraps. Her father, in exile, had saved the life of a young man, Nino, whose mother takes him in. He helps the boy with an education. Nino escapes Italy using a false identity, and years later he seeks out Maria to tell her what had happened to her father.
You could map the march of fascism across Europe base on Mercury’s employment rolls.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
It turns out that 1940s Hollywood is the perfect venue to look at a multitude of historical realities. Fear of Japanese invasion. The censorship and the Red scare. The America First movement. Racism and the treatment of ‘resident aliens’. Underpaid, invisible women. Tearing down Chinatown to build the train station. Unemployed Bela Lugosi impersonating himself. Actors unable to play their own ethnicity, Maria’s Chinese lover forced to play evil Japanese soldiers. It’s a crazy world, and yet perfectly historic, and unfortunately too recognizable.
In Italy, the antifascists are arrested for crimes they didn’t commit, and here? Here they’re arrested for crimes they’re the victims of.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
I rooted for the underdog characters, Maria secretly filming a movie starring her Chinese lover as–shocking!–a Chinese man. Artie, perfectly imperfect, standing up to his cold-hearted brother’s takeover of the studio. Nino, who escaped Italy under the assumed identity of a dead man, needing to make amends to the dead man’s mother. The architect whose Nazi German son is at risk of death from the very weapons being tested on her fake desert Berlin city. The vibrant, colorful people who populate the book snatch your heart.
I can’t wait to recommend this book to my book club so I can read it again.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Set in 1940s Hollywood, soon peopled with refugees from fascist Europe, it is the story of Maria whose socialist father was sentenced to internal exile in Mussolini’s Italy. She and her mother immigrated to America, and now she is associate producer at Mercury Pictures, underpaid and uncredited. Her boss Mercury studio founder Artie Feldman names his toupees and is mired in a never-ending battle over studio control with his twin brother. Maria loves a Chinese American, but miscegenation laws force them to keep their relationship under wraps. Her father, in exile, had saved the life of a young man, Nino, whose mother takes him in. He helps the boy with an education. Nino escapes Italy using a false identity, and years later he seeks out Maria to tell her what had happened to her father.
You could map the march of fascism across Europe base on Mercury’s employment rolls.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
It turns out that 1940s Hollywood is the perfect venue to look at a multitude of historical realities. Fear of Japanese invasion. The censorship and the Red scare. The America First movement. Racism and the treatment of ‘resident aliens’. Underpaid, invisible women. Tearing down Chinatown to build the train station. Unemployed Bela Lugosi impersonating himself. Actors unable to play their own ethnicity, Maria’s Chinese lover forced to play evil Japanese soldiers. It’s a crazy world, and yet perfectly historic, and unfortunately too recognizable.
In Italy, the antifascists are arrested for crimes they didn’t commit, and here? Here they’re arrested for crimes they’re the victims of.
from Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
I rooted for the underdog characters, Maria secretly filming a movie starring her Chinese lover as–shocking!–a Chinese man. Artie, perfectly imperfect, standing up to his cold-hearted brother’s takeover of the studio. Nino, who escaped Italy under the assumed identity of a dead man, needing to make amends to the dead man’s mother. The architect whose Nazi German son is at risk of death from the very weapons being tested on her fake desert Berlin city. The vibrant, colorful people who populate the book snatch your heart.
I can’t wait to recommend this book to my book club so I can read it again.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
August 1, 2022
I received this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review.
I have been carefully avoiding the recent rash of WWII novels but I couldn't resist Anthony Marra and was very glad I hadn't.
The story is set against a background of WWII, partly in a labour camp for dissidents in Italy but mostly among the foreign nationals and immigrants, mostly refugees from Europe, working at a Hollywood studio.
Italy under Il Duce becomes an impossible place to live when Maria’s father is sent to the dissident camp so her mother packs their bags and they immigrate to live with family in California.
As an adult Maria works for a film studio where she meets many European refugees trying to sell their skills to make a living while suffering discrimination and often under suspicion as ‘enemy aliens’.
Marra captures the false glamour and double-dealing of the Hollywood producers with a humor that does not belie the precarious political situation. He deals with the range of bigotry and discrimination experienced by the diverse cast of characters encountered in the studio and educates without preaching, developing in the reader a deep-feeling concern for his characters’ fates.
The story develops slowly and there isn't a lot of plot but the author's wonderful descriptions bring this world to life. His characters are treated lovingly, they are flawed but caring – the villains are off-stage – and, despite conflicting emotions, try to help one another. Not everyone has a happy conclusion but alongside the sadness you are left with a connection to and understanding of these people.
Highly recommended.
I have been carefully avoiding the recent rash of WWII novels but I couldn't resist Anthony Marra and was very glad I hadn't.
The story is set against a background of WWII, partly in a labour camp for dissidents in Italy but mostly among the foreign nationals and immigrants, mostly refugees from Europe, working at a Hollywood studio.
Italy under Il Duce becomes an impossible place to live when Maria’s father is sent to the dissident camp so her mother packs their bags and they immigrate to live with family in California.
As an adult Maria works for a film studio where she meets many European refugees trying to sell their skills to make a living while suffering discrimination and often under suspicion as ‘enemy aliens’.
Marra captures the false glamour and double-dealing of the Hollywood producers with a humor that does not belie the precarious political situation. He deals with the range of bigotry and discrimination experienced by the diverse cast of characters encountered in the studio and educates without preaching, developing in the reader a deep-feeling concern for his characters’ fates.
The story develops slowly and there isn't a lot of plot but the author's wonderful descriptions bring this world to life. His characters are treated lovingly, they are flawed but caring – the villains are off-stage – and, despite conflicting emotions, try to help one another. Not everyone has a happy conclusion but alongside the sadness you are left with a connection to and understanding of these people.
Highly recommended.
August 27, 2022
4 ½ stars
This is one of my FAVORITE authors for many reasons. All his books have moments that take your breath away. Be it the writing, the dark humor or his keen observations on human nature. His writing is always a feast to experience.
All these elements were present in his latest book about the film industry during WW2. The story highlights the absurdity of war through a constellation of connected characters.
I did miss the Russian setting from his previous books just a tiny bit and had I not has so much work pressure I would have read this faster.
Highly recommended.
This is one of my FAVORITE authors for many reasons. All his books have moments that take your breath away. Be it the writing, the dark humor or his keen observations on human nature. His writing is always a feast to experience.
All these elements were present in his latest book about the film industry during WW2. The story highlights the absurdity of war through a constellation of connected characters.
I did miss the Russian setting from his previous books just a tiny bit and had I not has so much work pressure I would have read this faster.
Highly recommended.
did-not-finish
September 6, 2022A hundred pages in, I am bailing on my most-anticipated novel of 2022, by one of my very most favorite writers. The jumble of a story just didn’t engage me, and whereas the humor and the pathos in A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon blended together in such a powerful way, here the jokes were irritating, and the main characters and the innumerable strands of the plot left me cold. Alas, Anthony Marra beat the second-book-syndrome, but not the third-book one.
August 6, 2022
4.5 stars. Anthony Marra is my best-loved author, something I don't say lightly. His debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, is flawless. This means that I had extremely high expectations for Mercury Pictures Presents, and although I thought the story was written in a lighter tone than his previous two books, his writing is still exquisite - moving seamlessly from tragedy to comedy in one paragraph, this author has the ability to break your heart with the lightest touch.
The novel tells the story of characters whose lives are connected by a World War II-era Hollywood studio, and I really enjoyed getting to know them all. It was also interesting to read that Artie and Ned Feldman were based on Jack and Harry Warner.
The novel tells the story of characters whose lives are connected by a World War II-era Hollywood studio, and I really enjoyed getting to know them all. It was also interesting to read that Artie and Ned Feldman were based on Jack and Harry Warner.
August 25, 2023
This was a painful one for me. Writing should serve the story it is telling, and the writing here is excruciating. I literally fell asleep reading it three times because the long, overwrought, self-indulgent writing sucks any momentum or emotion Mercury Pictures Presents might otherwise have scrounged up. The first 200 pages are unceasing. Once I made it past that, things got a little better (maybe Anthony Marra had even put himself off at that point), but to make it to the point of the novel at which it becomes readable I had to make it through two hundred pages of this:
“Gesture and insinuation comprised the Italian American vernacular, from mamma to Mafia, and coming from the diaspora where desires and death threats went articulately unspoken, Maria had a knack for smuggling subtext past the border guards of decorum at the Production Code Administration.”
“The priest was a known hypochondriac, and Mimi liked watching him squirm the next day, following Holy Communion, when he had to slurp down the sacramental backwash in full knowledge of the sullied places his parishioners’ lips had probed.”
“He ladeled a fedora full of fog onto his head and walks to the car.”
Overly flowery writing isn’t my taste, but that doesn’t mean it is bad… except when there is no variation. There was no respite from that style. I didn’t pick and choose sentences for my above example. I just opened the book and picked a particularly egregious example from that page.
The writing is so distracting that I barely have any response to the actual content of the book. It should have been really interesting in that it follows Italian- and Chinese-Americans in Hollywood during WWII, but that darn writing style put a blockade up between me and the story and I could not get invested in anything but hoping for it to end.
“Gesture and insinuation comprised the Italian American vernacular, from mamma to Mafia, and coming from the diaspora where desires and death threats went articulately unspoken, Maria had a knack for smuggling subtext past the border guards of decorum at the Production Code Administration.”
“The priest was a known hypochondriac, and Mimi liked watching him squirm the next day, following Holy Communion, when he had to slurp down the sacramental backwash in full knowledge of the sullied places his parishioners’ lips had probed.”
“He ladeled a fedora full of fog onto his head and walks to the car.”
Overly flowery writing isn’t my taste, but that doesn’t mean it is bad… except when there is no variation. There was no respite from that style. I didn’t pick and choose sentences for my above example. I just opened the book and picked a particularly egregious example from that page.
The writing is so distracting that I barely have any response to the actual content of the book. It should have been really interesting in that it follows Italian- and Chinese-Americans in Hollywood during WWII, but that darn writing style put a blockade up between me and the story and I could not get invested in anything but hoping for it to end.
February 17, 2025
Sold as a Hollywood Golden Age tale, the book is actually split between LA and wartime Italy. An engaging tale of war time refugees and immigrants, it suffers occasionally from over writing - every character and moment gets a full backstory - that slows the plot just when you want it to move along. But the descriptions and writing are excellent and there is a nice mix of humour and pathos.
September 2, 2022
Massive DNF. I'm annoyed to have read 210 pages and finally, after desperately trying to finish it, gave up. This story is drowning in description. I can't read another paragraph wholly. I was skimming and realized I should not have to force myself to continue a story with so many mixed-up plotlines, timeframes, and a multitude of characters I didn't give a shit about. Also, I feel the author handles his prose well, but under the title of Captain Pretentious. I'm pretty convinced this was originally a college dissertation for WWII history class turned overlong book.
P.S. It does have a few good one-liners.
P.S. It does have a few good one-liners.
September 30, 2022
"Mercury Pictures Presents" is a sprawling historical novel focusing on Italy and the U.S. right before and during World War II. The time frame is 1938 - 1946. In the beginning of the story, we are introduced to Guiseppe Lagana, his wife Annunziata and their 12 year old daughter, Maria. Guiseppe is a defense attorney living in Rome. He has sympathies towards those with Socialist views and defends several of his clients from political persecution. Mussolini has come into power at this time. Guiseppe's work (and a well intentioned mistake by Maria) leads to his becoming a political prisoner in a remote town. Maria loves her dad dearly and is only able to see him there once, before she emigrates with her mother to Los Angeles, California.
The book spends a fair amount of time describing Guiseppe's life as a political prisoner and the people he comes into contact with. I found these characters and their story lines to be among the most interesting of the entire book. Guiseppe has a lot of integrity. He tutors his landlady's son (Nino) in exchange for the rent he owes her. Guiseppe and Nino forge a father-son relationship. Nino becomes a photographer and through complicated circumstances, is forced to emigrate to the United States, where he eventually meets up with Maria, Guiseppe's daughter. Throughout this time, Maria and her father have been able to write letters to each other, but the letters are heavily censored and cut up by Guiseppes's captors.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Maria has grown up to become an administrative assistant to Artie Feldman, co-owner of a movie production company called "Mercury Pictures". The studio makes B grade movies. As events of World War II gear up, the U.S. War Department contracts with Mercury Pictures to film propaganda movies promoting the nation's involvement in the war. The author's sense of humor lightens the heavy subject matter and makes the antics in Hollywood more fun to read about. Still, both Maria and Artie come across as 'cold fish'.
All told, there are about twenty characters in the novel, each one connected in some way. An interesting figure is Anna Weber, who has emigrated from Berlin, Germany and is the studio's miniaturist. Anna purposely left Germany before the war started, due to its politics.
"German was the language Anna thought, counted, dreamed, prayed, and cursed in; it was lovely to remember that it could be beautiful, even if she knew Germany too well to ever speak German beautifully again." Later, she helped the U.S. military in its war effort against Germany.
My Impressions - This is quite an ambitious book. Many historic events are looked at, including: the Depression, birth of Hollywood and the movie industry, European immigration to the U.S., German occupation in Europe, World War II and Pearl Harbor. There are interlinked story lines of at least 20 characters. The book's length is a healthy 416 pages. Sometimes though, 'less is more'. For me, the book would have been better if some of the more minor story lines had been cut.
I loved the first half of the book and thought it worthy of 5 stars. My enthusiasm waned as the book got lengthier and more involved. The book ended on a stronger note with its epilogue. The epilogue provided a satisfying closure to the novel; I enjoyed how it tied up loose threads about the more major characters and explained where they were in their lives. And Maria had evolved by then to have more warmth and charm.
Additional: Near where I live, we have a historic part of the city known as "Little Italy," located on Mayfield Road. It was mentioned in the book. Nino traveled through here on his way to L.A.
The book spends a fair amount of time describing Guiseppe's life as a political prisoner and the people he comes into contact with. I found these characters and their story lines to be among the most interesting of the entire book. Guiseppe has a lot of integrity. He tutors his landlady's son (Nino) in exchange for the rent he owes her. Guiseppe and Nino forge a father-son relationship. Nino becomes a photographer and through complicated circumstances, is forced to emigrate to the United States, where he eventually meets up with Maria, Guiseppe's daughter. Throughout this time, Maria and her father have been able to write letters to each other, but the letters are heavily censored and cut up by Guiseppes's captors.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Maria has grown up to become an administrative assistant to Artie Feldman, co-owner of a movie production company called "Mercury Pictures". The studio makes B grade movies. As events of World War II gear up, the U.S. War Department contracts with Mercury Pictures to film propaganda movies promoting the nation's involvement in the war. The author's sense of humor lightens the heavy subject matter and makes the antics in Hollywood more fun to read about. Still, both Maria and Artie come across as 'cold fish'.
All told, there are about twenty characters in the novel, each one connected in some way. An interesting figure is Anna Weber, who has emigrated from Berlin, Germany and is the studio's miniaturist. Anna purposely left Germany before the war started, due to its politics.
"German was the language Anna thought, counted, dreamed, prayed, and cursed in; it was lovely to remember that it could be beautiful, even if she knew Germany too well to ever speak German beautifully again." Later, she helped the U.S. military in its war effort against Germany.
My Impressions - This is quite an ambitious book. Many historic events are looked at, including: the Depression, birth of Hollywood and the movie industry, European immigration to the U.S., German occupation in Europe, World War II and Pearl Harbor. There are interlinked story lines of at least 20 characters. The book's length is a healthy 416 pages. Sometimes though, 'less is more'. For me, the book would have been better if some of the more minor story lines had been cut.
I loved the first half of the book and thought it worthy of 5 stars. My enthusiasm waned as the book got lengthier and more involved. The book ended on a stronger note with its epilogue. The epilogue provided a satisfying closure to the novel; I enjoyed how it tied up loose threads about the more major characters and explained where they were in their lives. And Maria had evolved by then to have more warmth and charm.
Additional: Near where I live, we have a historic part of the city known as "Little Italy," located on Mayfield Road. It was mentioned in the book. Nino traveled through here on his way to L.A.
August 10, 2023
4.5 *
Ο Μάρα μόλις εξελίχθηκε σε έναν από τους αγαπημένους μου συγγραφείς. Νομίζω ότι ακόμη κι αν έγραφε τον τηλεφωνικό κατάλογο θα τον διάβαζα. Οι χαρακτήρες που πλάθει είναι εξαιρετικοί και ο τρόπος που φωτίζει ακόμη και τους μικρότερους χαρακτήρες, πλάθοντας ιστορίες που στο τέλος αλληλοσυμπληρώνονται, είναι πραγματικά αριστοτεχνικός. Ο μόνος λόγος που βάζω 4.5 είναι γιατί δεν θέλω να αδικήσω τα 2 προηγούμενα βιβλία του που είναι από τα πιο αγαπημένα μου. Γενικώς θεωρώ ότι ο ΑΜ έβαλε τον πήχη πολύ ψηλά, πολύ νωρίς γράφοντας ως πρώτο βιβλίο τον Αστερισμό ζωτικών φαινομένων σε ηλικία μόλις 28 ετών. Περιμένω με αγωνία πλέον οτιδήποτε καινούριο γράψει.
Ο Μάρα μόλις εξελίχθηκε σε έναν από τους αγαπημένους μου συγγραφείς. Νομίζω ότι ακόμη κι αν έγραφε τον τηλεφωνικό κατάλογο θα τον διάβαζα. Οι χαρακτήρες που πλάθει είναι εξαιρετικοί και ο τρόπος που φωτίζει ακόμη και τους μικρότερους χαρακτήρες, πλάθοντας ιστορίες που στο τέλος αλληλοσυμπληρώνονται, είναι πραγματικά αριστοτεχνικός. Ο μόνος λόγος που βάζω 4.5 είναι γιατί δεν θέλω να αδικήσω τα 2 προηγούμενα βιβλία του που είναι από τα πιο αγαπημένα μου. Γενικώς θεωρώ ότι ο ΑΜ έβαλε τον πήχη πολύ ψηλά, πολύ νωρίς γράφοντας ως πρώτο βιβλίο τον Αστερισμό ζωτικών φαινομένων σε ηλικία μόλις 28 ετών. Περιμένω με αγωνία πλέον οτιδήποτε καινούριο γράψει.
August 11, 2022
This is (for me!) going to be high up on my list for best book of 2022 – I thought it was a masterful work of fiction. Set in Italy and Los Angeles, it is, at its base, the story of Italian immigrants and Hollywood, just before and during WWII. One of the main characters is Maria, a young Italian woman, who inadvertently discloses her father’s anti-fascist beliefs, which causes his imprisonment. Maria and her mother emigrate to the United States, where Maria becomes the employee of the other main character, Artie. Artie is half owner and head of production of Mercury Pictures, a lower budget/secondary movie production company in Hollywood. Swirling around these two are many wonderfully drawn characters – including a friend of Maria’s father, a German miniaturist (who knew about the use of miniatures in Hollywood?), a Chinese-American actor (who can only get cast to play the role of “evil Japs”), Artie’s straight laced brother, and Maria’s (hilarious) aunts. There are several underlying themes, including recognition of the many levels of “make believe” in Hollywood. (I did not know that during WWII the US government (through Hollywood) produced its own propaganda films.) The other large underlying theme is the plight of European immigrants – Italian and German - who escaped fascism to come to the freedom offered by the United States. The bias and legal restrictions to which they were subject (as enemy aliens in the US) were difficult and unexpected (for them), to say the least. I felt that photography itself was a frequently recurring and extremely well done theme – from passport photos torn in half (so that the other half could be sent back home to Italy when the person arrived safely in the US), to Hollywood movies and war filming. What makes this novel different from Marra’s previous work is that there is humor – and lots of it! Of course humor is often juxtaposed with tragedy….. But most importantly, the writing is sublime. In know there have been mixed reviews of this novel, and I both respect and understand that (there are a lot of story lines). However, for me, this book provided just about everything I could hope for in a novel.
September 12, 2022
Sweeping story that takes the reader from Italy to Hollywood in the 1940s, while exploring the many ways immigrants were penalized during WWII due to xenophobia. It begins in Italy where protagonist Maria Lagana is a young girl. Her father is a lawyer defending citizens against outlandish accusations brought by the fascist government. Due to Maria’s youthful error in judgment, her father is arrested and confined on an island. She and her mother emigrate to the US, where they live with her aunts. She gets a job with Mercury Pictures, a second-tier film studio, and eventually ends up in a production role working with Artie Feldman, the studio head.
We learn of her relationship with Chinese American actor Eddie Lu, friendship with an Italian immigrant with ties to her father, and a German emigree hired by the studio. Artie must travel to Washington DC to be questioned by the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda. Themes include the abuses of authoritarianism, the biases introduced through propaganda (and how readily it is believed), and how innocent people are harmed in the process. It is about human connections, figuring out one’s path in the face of systemic discrimination, and the power of forgiveness.
Marra addresses these themes through a series of interrelated storylines. He inserts a good dose of humor along the way. There does not seem to be a main narrative arc. It is more a compilation of side stories that, taken together, form a picture of the social milieu of the time period. It is much different than other books I have read by Anthony Marra. It is certainly relevant to today’s world where so many people seem willing to accept disinformation as the “truth.” It is an enjoyable mix of historical storytelling, entertainment, and social commentary.
We learn of her relationship with Chinese American actor Eddie Lu, friendship with an Italian immigrant with ties to her father, and a German emigree hired by the studio. Artie must travel to Washington DC to be questioned by the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda. Themes include the abuses of authoritarianism, the biases introduced through propaganda (and how readily it is believed), and how innocent people are harmed in the process. It is about human connections, figuring out one’s path in the face of systemic discrimination, and the power of forgiveness.
Marra addresses these themes through a series of interrelated storylines. He inserts a good dose of humor along the way. There does not seem to be a main narrative arc. It is more a compilation of side stories that, taken together, form a picture of the social milieu of the time period. It is much different than other books I have read by Anthony Marra. It is certainly relevant to today’s world where so many people seem willing to accept disinformation as the “truth.” It is an enjoyable mix of historical storytelling, entertainment, and social commentary.
December 6, 2022
I am a sucker for books about WW2. I am a big reader of memoirs or novels about immigrants and exiles. Books about European emigres in 1940s Hollywood should be a slam-dunk. Such an interesting time in Hollywood because of the influx from Europe of so many artists and intellectuals (not to mention my own parents). But somehow Mercury Pictures Presents fell flat for me. It felt light-weight and cliched. There were too many characters and storylines so the novel in all of its parts never really gelled as a whole.
unfinished
August 16, 2022Gave up after 65 pages. SUCH a shame, as I adored Marra's two previous works (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno, but I wasn't connecting to the characters or setting at all. Something about it felt too familiar, also; I kept trying to think what it was reminding me of. (Maybe Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe?) I felt vindicated when I later read this Kirkus review.
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