Mercury Pictures was a B-film company making many soon-to-be-forgotten films. Hiring good production people was almost impossible. The entire cadre of production and actors was contained within a five-mile area of Hollywood. Maria is a “production assistant” who carries the main workload throughout the novel.

The idealism of some of the characters within the government was to control the thinking of the American people. Prior to making a movie, the script was required to be sent to the motion picture censors who had to approve the film before production. Many topics including foreign governments and potential espionage were summarily excluded from production.

I found the book very enlightening. Foreigners gravitated to Hollywood because of the motion picture industry. Scripts were written which could have been viewed as subversive so freedom of expression and freedom of speech is curtailed because of the potential for foreign influences. Censorship is rampant.

My overall impression was that the material is well researched and written. Of course, after WWII our country was paranoid regarding communism and other foreign ideas. The best way to control these ideas at the time was to clamp down on those in the motion picture industry. An interesting lesson in government intervention. 4 stars – CE Williams

Mercury Pictures Presents
By Anthony Marra

film industry and the war effort as a whole.

This book is at times a funny, quirky, and interesting read. While it does leave some unanswered questions, it presents an unvarnished picture of This book offers a unique picture of the United States in the heyday of the motion picture studios and the run-up to and through World War II. It is the story of the influx of immigrants fleeing Europe and Asia, only to be treated as enemies and, in the case of Asians, sent to internment camps.

Meanwhile the Hollywood studios – many headed by Jews – were showing their anti-semitic, racist prejudices in their hiring practices and the films they produced. Those films reflected the paranoia of the government and the majority of the American people. At the same time, the "good old boy" network was still actively downplaying the contributions of women in the some of the darker sides of America in that era – some of which have survived to the current time. It brings into focus just how damaging this kind of thinking can be. Well worth the read.

Mercury Pictures Presents is a World War II Hollywood saga with an ensemble cast of down-on-their-luck characters whose stories are intertwined in improbable ways. Marra’s words painted the movie I saw in my head as I read this historical fiction; I can only hope that a brilliant film director can someday do the novel justice.

Mercury Pictures, a struggling B-studio headed by Artie Feldman and his collection of named toupees, becomes a propaganda filmmaker at the onset of the war. Artie’s assistant Maria Lagana left her father Giuseppe behind in Italy years earlier as her mother and she fled to Los Angeles to live with aunts. Her father remained in San Lorenzo as a political prisoner of the open internment policies of Mussolini’s fascist pre-war Italy. Artie’s studio becomes a second home for many European refugees including Anna Weber, a German miniaturist whose Nazi husband took custody of their son, and Nino Picone, an Italian photographer with an alias (Vincent Cortese) and a connection to Giuseppe Lagana.. Add in other bit players like Artie’s twin Ned, and Maria’s actor boyfriend Eddie Lu for a full cast of wonderfully human characters whose survival depends on others. The full range of guilt, doubt, love and hate, sacrifice, forgiveness, creativity, deceit, trust, and honor entwine the cast as they find their ways through the war and Hollywood’s part in romanticizing said war.

I highly recommend Mercury Pictures Presents for its brilliant portrayal of a difficult time in our history through the eyes of regular people. I hadn’t expected to laugh out loud but Marra has provided his characters with great humor at just the right moments. Four stars!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Hogarth for an advanced reader’s ebook copy.

I’ve come to expect great things of Anthony Marra, after being absolutely blown away by his debut A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno. Mercury Pictures Presents has some of the same elements as those other books—meticulously recreated historical setting, characters who are called on to sacrifice themselves to save others, epic plots—it has something I haven’t seen before. This book has an acid sense of humor. So many character descriptions and bits of dialogue had me chortling despite the dangers faced by the book’s cast of characters. I hope Marra starts to get more critical and bookish attention; he is a treasure.

Mercury Pictures Presents is all about facades: emotional, physical, and documentary. Every one of the major characters (and nearly all of the minor ones) presents a front to the world that hides their fears, sorrows, regrets, and anger. We, the readers, are among the few who get to see behind the facades to understand what’s really going on. The narrative takes us from pre-World War II Italy to wartime Los Angeles to the end of the war. The first protagonist we meet, Maria Lagana, is a young girl who hasn’t learned to be wary of the world. In an effort to protect her communist father, she attempts to burn drafts of legal documents he’s written to try and free people who’ve been caught on the wrong side of Mussolini‘s regime. She is caught before she can finish but her father pays the price. Once the authorities learn what’s in those papers, Giuseppe Lagana is sent into internal exile, from Rome to rural Calabria. This sharp, brutal lesson in the necessity of keeping secrets shapes Maria for the rest of her life, even after she emigrates to the United States with her mother.

Adult Maria gets a job at the struggling Mercury Pictures. Mercury used to be great but they’re fighting a losing battle against Hays Code censors and the major studios. They’re barely hanging on to B-grade status. Maria excels at marketing and sneaking things past the censor. That said, she wants more. She wants to be a producer. She wants to have a better relationship with her mother. She wants her Chinese American boyfriend to have better roles than the awful typecast characters that are the only thing on offer for actors of Asian descent. She wants to know if her father, who she hasn’t seen in over a decade, is alive or dead.

The rest of the cast in this book are all connected to Maria in some way and they are also all struggling between keeping up appearances and their own dreams. Her boss, Artie, is always trying to return Mercury to its glory days. We see his latest attempt: turning the studio into a propaganda machine to earn money from the War Department. Meanwhile, an old acquaintance from Italy has to hide under an assumed name and dodge restrictions on enemy aliens to try and become a great photographer. A hapless (and hilarious) detective in fascist Italy scrambles to protect people from his own government. Maria’s boyfriend Eddie Lu begins to loathe himself for sacrificing his integrity in order to get work. All of these plots and subplots are beautifully executed. Marra is a master of psychologically rich character development.

This summary doesn’t come close to accurately conveying the scope and depth of Mercury Pictures Presents. I hope something here sparks your interest because, as I mentioned above, I don’t think Marra is getting nearly the attention he deserves for his incredible, emotionally wrenching, and highly entertaining novels.

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.

Mercury Pictures Presents
by Anthony Marra
Pub Date: August 2, 2022
Hogarth Press
* Historical Fiction
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.

This is an epic of a book. It touches on politics, emigres, the war in Europe, and a million other stories that the author gives time to explore and play out. This is not an easy ready but definitely a 4 star!~
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.
4 star

3.75. I really liked Marra’s debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena so I was excited when I got an advance copy of his most recent novel, Mercury Pictures Presents. His first novel was about the Chechen war—its horrors, tragedies and yet also encompassed love and forgiveness. This story was a bit challenging to get through and I had trouble staying engaged. However, this is an interesting historical fiction saga of a very diverse group of people who become involved with a fledgling Hollywood studio in the 1940s, and into World War II. But the novel also recounts their struggles, mostly of recent Italian emigres fleeing from Mussolini’s and the Nazis atrocities, and it’s impact on their lives. It is a story of painful loss, family, love, deception, and triumph. However, as with his other novel, the prose is simply stunning. It also was very witty in parts. This is a challenging read so not for those who want an easy read. I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Mercury Pictures Presents is an epic story of a woman struggling to survive in the 1940's. Maria Lagana is an Italian immigrant burdened with a childhood mistake that bring her mother and her to America. Reminiscing of the memories she had with her father in the cinema, she claws her way slowly to become an associate producer - almost unheard of for a woman at that time.

The dawn of WWII stirs politics into the movie business and Maria needs to determine how to support her boss (congressional hearings), her boyfriend (an Asian actor who is typecast) and her mother who she is estranged from. It's a fascinating tale as Maria attempts to keep her personal and professional life separate as the world is literally exploding all around her.

Marra is the author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, and this novel is one of the most anticipated for the year. It's unusual, nuanced and complex. If you like an epic tale, historical thrills or just beautiful literary fiction, then Mercury Pictures Presents is for you!
#RandomHouse #hogarth #NetGalley #NetGalleyreads

With the backdrop of the European turmoil leading up to World War II, and the film industry of the 1940's, Marra has written a complex novel about family, politics, loyalty, betrayal, and greed. There are several key characters, with chapters devoted to each, but the focal one is Maria. She spent her childhood in a small town in Italy and all was happy until her defense lawyer father was arrested for his inflammatory writings critical of Mussolini's government. Maria's journey brought her to Los Angeles, where her adulthood revolved around her work for a minor studio making B level films. But it is not just Maria's story, because her family members, childhood friends, co-workers and boss, and boyfriend are thoroughly introduced, not only in the context of their relationships to Maria, but also as they are affected by indignities, hypocrisies, cruelties, and dangers of the workplace, government, and culture of the times. The characters' personalities and the inside look at the 40's film industry propel the story along, and the issues raised are certainly relevant today, providing much food for thought. I relished some of Marra's stunning turns of phrase.

An interesting book set around the world of movies and well as behind the scenes. And while I didn't love the book I still enjoyed the read.

I went into this book with high expectations, having read the author's previous book, Constellation of Vital Phenomena, a book I very much enjoyed. This story largely follows Maria who had to leave Italy with her mother after her father is accused of anti fascist activities, something that Maria inadvertently played a role in and something that plagues her throughout the book. Maria and her mother end up in Los Angeles and she finds work at Mercury Pictures, a "B" type studio that puts out low budget films and military type training films (the story takes place just before and during WW2). Maria is an assistant producer and is looking to become an executive producer, but her boss and owner of the studio continually denies her the credit she deserves. Maria's boyfriend is a Chinese American who works as an actor mostly typecast in bit parts. Maria and him are both labelled enemy aliens and required to register as one. There is a lot going on in this story and it's difficult to distill it down, but I will say the author did a very good job of moving the story along, there were some sections that I thought read more like a novella at times, but in the end the whole story ties together very nicely. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Random House/Hogarth for the ARC.

This book is in my top ten for 2022. I loved it. I love historical fiction as a genre but thought I had burned out on World War Two novels. Apparently not! This is a unique take in that it is mostly set in Los Angeles and Italy.
I enjoyed the history, the characters, the plot and the wonderful writing. I was also impressed by the consistent humor throughout despite the often-bleak facts of the story. Such an intelligent structure and yet so easy to follow.

I adored our leading lady, Maria, who right as the US is entering WWII, is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures. Her tale is a family saga worthy of its own novel but serves as a wonderful base for this book. Her story will resonate with all the working women out there, especially those of us who have immigrated to the US.

SO much happens in this book and there are quite a few wonderful subplots but ultimately, we learn what life was like in the movie industry in LA before and during the war. I am no historian, but it all seemed very authentic to me and I feel highly educated as to how the US used movies as part of the war effort. I did not know that Italian Americans had to register as enemy aliens along with the Japanese. The way Asians were treated by Hollywood back then was another lesson. The degree of detail shows me what immense research Marra has undertaken. It pays off in spades. The author brings it all to life with engaging characters that we care about, even when discussing budgets.
The ending is satisfying without being a happy one. I had a sense of hope and continuation. I am so impressed by this author’s writing and research that I intend to work through his backlist asap.
Thanks for a new author and for a wonderful read, NetGalley, Anthony Marra and Random House.

Mercury Pictures Presents follows Italian emigre, Maria as she works her way from secretary to producer of films at Mercury Pictures in the 1930's. Surrounded by a cast of characters from both sides of the Atlantic, Maria's experiences reflect both her homeland and her newly adopted land. Dealing with the Hollywood power system where the "good ol' boys" make the decisions to make or break a film, being denied the ability to put her name on her own work and trying to help her Chinese American lover secure work worthy of his talents, keep Maria constantly bucking the system. Maria is a survivor however, and carrying the guilt of a childhood act that cost her mother and her their home and husband/father, Maria constantly strives to overcome unwritten rules and policies which will hold her back. Maneuvering her way through the early days of Hollywood studios and the US entry into World War II, Maria finally learns to play the power game to her advantage.

This beautifully written historical novel explores life during and after World War II from the perspectives of those who “escaped” it and settled in Hollywood. The story opens in the offices of Mercury Pictures, run by film producer Artie Feldman and his assistant Maria Lagana. The writing style in the initial Hollywood chapters is clever and sardonic, sort of a cross between 40s film noir dialogue and Groucho Marx. I was a bit relieved to discover that this tone was temporary, presented to match the setting, I think. When the story left Hollywood to focus on Maria’s backstory in Italy, the style became more lyrical and wistful. Regardless, Anthony Marra writes beautifully; each well-constructed sentence conveys precision and meaning and pulls the reader more deeply into the experiences of the novel’s characters.

Late in the novel, the narrator comments that those that came to America to escape political oppression in their home countries found it again in their adopted country’s policies based on fear and misunderstanding. Marra explores the complexities of identity, guilt, family dynamics, and exploitation to address what was for me this book's overarching theme: loss. Characters dealt with loss of loved ones, loss of country, loss of freedom, loss of purpose. They reinvented themselves, pursued material gain, and even reconstructed Berlin neighborhoods to cope and come to terms with profound suffering.

Within their pain rises a strength that gives Marra’s story a tangible hope. Despite their circumstances, the characters persevere through a combination of resignation and will to carve out lives for themselves where they have landed. At the end of the book, a character comments on an overheard “Yes” and can’t decide whether that expression was a cry of loss or triumph. The novel allows us to conclude that it was (and perhaps our own cries are) likely both.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House, Hogarth, for providing me with an advance copy of this book. My review is voluntary and reflects my honest opinion.

Anthony Marra's debut novel, "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" was one of my favorite novels of 2013. He cleared that high bar with his 2015 follow-up, "The Tsar of Love and Techno", which I would put on my list of favorite novels - period. So this, his third novel, came with some pretty high expectations. I would still say he's three for three.

Like his first two novels, Marra is once again taking on the human toll that war and its aftermath has on entire civilizations. But more importantly, on the individuals who have lived through it and now must look down the long path of life that stretches in front of them. He did this so poignantly in "Constellation" and its tale of life after Russia's brutal destruction of Chechnya. He displayed virtuoso grace in spinning the webs that made up the modern Soviet oppression story in "Tsar". With this book, Marra looks back to WWII, to Italy, to the European immigrants who escaped and made it to America (Los Angeles, specifically), and those who did not. The sons who died, the sons who escaped, the mothers waiting for their return, or their burial. It's about the living, and the ghosts they have to live with until they are reunited.

I'm a sucker for a "those-who-leave-and-those-who-stay" narrative, so my enjoyment was all but assured. There is some gorgeous prose here. As our protagonist Maria, newly relocated to California, observes all of her elderly Italian aunts with whom she now lives, Marra has a goldmine of material. I could have read an entire novel just about the great-aunts.

The protagonist, Maria, gets a job at a small Hollywood movie studio called Mercury Pictures, and that is the central location where the story of Italian and German immigrants unfolds - including their status as enemy alien residents - expected to create propaganda to counteract their fascist homelands and in praise of their new country, all while being denied the same freedoms and rights as everyone else by the American government. Meanwhile, American actor Eddie Lu deals with being typecast as evil Asians and treated as an enemy alien himself, despite having been born and raised in Los Angeles and never having once left the city limits.

My one criticism comes with Mercury Pictures itself. Although there is a lot of fascinating information conveyed about the workings of Hollywood during the war, some of the dialogue borders on hokey. Many of these Hollywood scenes seemed to be written entirely with the objective of being sold and turned into a movie or drama series for one of the dozens of streamers looking for content. I never appreciate it when I feel like that is motivating a writer. It comes across as a combination of Aaron Sorkin writing an episode of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel". Too snappy. Too perfect. Too laced with irony-sarcasm-humor-wisdom, but without the talented actors actually speaking the lines and selling their believability to the audience. Perhaps this was Marra's own commentary on the artificial personalities of Hollywood-types, but I wasn't completely sold that it was written as a choice - with a wink and a smile.

Whatever the case, this is not representative of the book as a whole. The story always comes back around to the humanity of its characters and absolutely succeeds in immersing us in their hidden depths. You care about the generational ties that bind and constrict, that push and pull, that lift up and drag down. The love and pain that reverberate each way on a family's time continuum. I'm not sure any other contemporary fiction writer today executes that particular bittersweet symphony quite as well.

And then there is just plain good writing. Such as this:

"Gladys said the crosshairs in the bombsights were threaded from black widow spider silk. Apparently, it was some kind of super thread, stronger than steel, more pliable than elastic, and impervious to the temperatures of high-altitude flying. As if anyone needed another reason to fear spiders."

The novel's many threads are mostly tied-off nicely in the end, although I might say he has a few too many. There are some really minor characters that could possibly have been edited out entirely. They provide texture, but draw things out. But the ones that count, really count.

Marra knows exactly what to do to illicit a final pull of the heart strings - which is entirely satisfying because it has been fully earned.

Mercury Pictures Presents is a historical fiction set in WW2 era Hollywood. The story follows a family of Italian immigrants as they naviagte life and their relationships with each other in the United States, particularly Los Angeles, and how their lives intertwine with the movie industry as well as with the war in Europe. The first chapter of this novel engaged me right away, however once it started getting into the backstory of the family I was a little turned off. I found myself bored and there was a lot of Italian language that I didn’t know. I was about 15% in and was ready to DNF it, however I pushed on a bit further and once we were brought again back into present day I was completely enthralled and loved everything about the book after that. I am glad I pushed through or I would have missed out on a great work. Aside from the backstory in the beginning this novel was great. I love the setting, the characters were well developed and realistic and I truly enjoyed the plot and its originality. Although the plot seemed all over the place at times, it came together beautifully in the end.

Hollywood during WWII with a behind the scenes look at what goes on before you see the film on the big screen. Maria Lagana fled Italy with her mother after her father was arrested as anti-Mussolini lawyer. A decade later she is the protégé of Artie Feldman the head honcho of the studio. Her job is to get certain scripts past the censorship of the Production Code Administration....ultimately she wants to be a producer. This novel is filled with a host of characters, many of which are refugees running from the horror in Europe. I have ever read this author's work before and found this novel a refreshing and different account of Hollywood during WWII. The book itself is a bit over 400 pages, while not quite as large as other books I have read, there is a lot to read yet never boring. I enjoyed the story, enjoyed the many ups and downs of the characters. In short, I would definitely recommend "Mercury Pictures Presents." My thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A tale of immigrants and outsiders in the film industry during WWII, Mercury Pictures Presents deftly manages to inform, enlighten, and entertain without weighing down the reader with the bleakness of war.

Italian immigrant Maria Lagana and her mother move to Los Angeles in the '30s after her father is exiled within Italy for defying fascism. They move in with some distant aunts who are an absolute riot on the page. Maria eventually finds a job at a film production company, Mercury Pictures. She thrives under the tutelage of Art Feldman and becomes a film producer in her own right. Mercury Pictures is home to many displaced European artists and tradespeople fleeing the rise of fascism in their home countries. One of these emigres comes bearing news of Maria's father, and leads her to try something new within the film industry.

Reading the above description, you may find it hard to believe but I often found great delight in this book. Anthony Marra has a true gift for cleverly turning phrases into bon mots. There are such richly drawn characters and several heartfelt plotlines. There is, however, no major plotline. A lovely book, it is simply character driven rather than plot driven.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth Press for my advanced copy of this title.**

Couldn't get into this story. Seemed so flat and not interesting. However, I'm sure it's a great book for others.

In Mercury Pictures Presents, Anthony Marra gives us a slice of life in the Era of movie studios and war propaganda. Of European war refugees and immigrants, searching for their own identity and place in America.

Maria Lagana is billed as the primary character, but in her purview we are presented with a whole host of characters who cross her path, and often provide their own point of view within the book. That said, she is the one the story continues to return to time and time again, as each secondary character resolves his or her own story.

If you read either of Anthony Marra's previous books, you will be familiar with his style, and this book holds true to that. We get layer upon layer of character history and then glimpses of their future as well, and he so cleverly builds each character interaction to always develop the story.

This story does fall within the time period of WWII but is not a story about war, but about living during wartime and how that can bring out the best and the worst in our government and in our selves.

I enjoyed this one as I did his previous books. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.