Pre-Owned Roscoe (Paperback) 0142001732 9780142001738

Publishers Weekly,From Day of the Locusts to The Player, Hollywood's failures fuel the writerly imagination much more than its gaudy successes. Stern's latest novel turns not on a flamboyant burnout, but on the petering away of a last chance. Keneret is a movie director of the generation of Kubrick and Kramer, and his major films are long behind him when he discovers a beautiful tennis pro named Leet de Loor in Fiji. Leet's story inspires Keneret: she was abandoned by her father when, in the '60s, the French newspapers exposed him for having written the anti-Jewish laws in Vichy France. He left Leet and her mother in order to spare them, fleeing to where else? Argentina. Keneret takes this story and tries to pump it into the shape of a movie, starring Leet. The project is hamstrung from the beginning by bad luck. Keneret has lined up a backer, Duggan, who always brings along his sinister factotum, Vlach Scholem. Duggan and Vlach are more and more hesitant about Keneret's film; eventually, they pull the plug. Meanwhile Leet, who has come to L.A. to star in "her" film, gets by on various jobs, including one as an amanuensis for Spear, a retired film critic who has written a book on Keneret. From these beginnings she branches out, starting HAL, Inc., an agency that produces corporate biographies. The bridge in the book is between Spear and Keneret, both dissatisfied with the limits of retirement, both oddballs in unintellectual Southern California. Stern is a distinguished writer (Other Men's Daughters, etc.) whose audience will appreciate this beautifully controlled, well-crafted work in which he gently pushes a parallel between aging men and a generation of capable younger women. It is, for a Hollywood novel, oddly tender. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved,Publishers Weekly,Publishers Weekly,From Day of the Locusts to The Player, Hollywood's failures fuel the writerly imagination much more than its gaudy successes. Stern's latest novel turns not on a flamboyant burnout, but on the petering away of a last chance. Keneret is a movie director of the generation of Kubrick and Kramer, and his major films are long behind him when he discovers a beautiful tennis pro named Leet de Loor in Fiji. Leet's story inspires Keneret: she was abandoned by her father when, in the '60s, the French newspapers exposed him for having written the anti-Jewish laws in Vichy France. He left Leet and her mother in order to spare them, fleeing to where else? Argentina. Keneret takes this story and tries to pump it into the shape of a movie, starring Leet. The project is hamstrung from the beginning by bad luck. Keneret has lined up a backer, Duggan, who always brings along his sinister factotum, Vlach Scholem. Duggan and Vlach are more and more hesitant about Keneret's film; eventually, they pull the plug. Meanwhile Leet, who has come to L.A. to star in "her" film, gets by on various jobs, including one as an amanuensis for Spear, a retired film critic who has written a book on Keneret. From these beginnings she branches out, starting HAL, Inc., an agency that produces corporate biographies. The bridge in the book is between Spear and Keneret, both dissatisfied with the limits of retirement, both oddballs in unintellectual Southern California. Stern is a distinguished writer (Other Men's Daughters, etc.) whose audience will appreciate this beautifully controlled, well-crafted work in which he gently pushes a parallel between aging men and a generation of capable younger women. It is, for a Hollywood novel, oddly tender. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved