Synopsis:

Deirdre Shaw's emotionally honest, clear-eyed debut follows a thirtysomething woman forced to redefine love, career, and family after her young marriage falters.

Book Excerpt:

I thought then of the studio lot where I worked in Hollywood, where more than once I’d walked across vast expanses of black pavement on a balmy evening, tired from a long day, yawning absently, headed to my car, only to stumble into some dimly lit scene from another time – a Saigon café in the late 60’s, a turn of the century Western shootout, a game of stickball on a Bronx street, circa 1955 – and feel sure that I was dreaming. When the cameras rolled and the director yelled “Action!” it was so still and quiet that time stopped and the walls of the world fell away and there was only the scene playing out before us. It was the closest thing to time travel I could ever imagine.

In Hollywood it was our job to create a world that looked and sounded just like reality, yet was not. We had meetings in which we discussed every detail of every scene: what color dress the star would wear, and whether the bar where she met her lover would be bustling or quiet, and what time of night it was, and how softly the rain would fall against the window, and what kind of flowers her lover might bring. And then every department went out and did their part and bought their things, their props and their costumes and their rain making machines. But every time, without fail, when I saw the scene finally shoot, I forgot that it was all made up, that it was a reality we had conjured for ourselves. When the cameras rolled, I bought into it, all of it – believed that she was wearing the yellow dress because she knew he liked it best, that outside the streets were deserted and damp, that a shadow fell across the doorway and then faded away because her lover had had a sudden change of heart. It was all magical, and for a few moments each day I understood with every bone in my body why people who worked in Hollywood wouldn’t trade it for the world, why there was no business like show business, why the show must indeed go on.

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Topics/Categories:

Divorce, happy endings, Heartbreak, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Love, New York, Romance, Thirtysomethings, Women

Genre:

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Type of Work:

Novel

Publishers:

Random House

Purchase From:

Amazon.com

Original Publish Date:

2009-04-14

ISBNs:

978-1-4000-6770-1

Formats:

Hardcover