When does the observer become the observed? A journeyman reporter, Thomas Cleary, is assigned to write the obituary for the recently deceased boss of an old movie studio. He approaches the man’s daughter Lily for an interview, and she invites him to a dinner party, where he meets many famous and not-so-famous people. Plans are made for further meetings with these entertaining and interesting people, but when Thomas finds himself where he wasn’t supposed to be, he meets Matilda.
Matilda has been hidden away in her family’s estate with little contact in the outside world. She is both childlike and possesses a cloying privileged outlook that indicates she believes her every wish will be satisfied. This complicated tale spreads from Hollywood to Hawaii as Thomas asks questions that lead to a bittersweet revelation.
This is a romantic story that is told as the tale of an unstable person dropped into an unpredictable situation. I enjoyed this unusual book that is set up as a contemporary romance in the classic style of an earlier time, when Gothic novels held suspenseful assignations and romance didn’t always lead to true love.

An L.A. Fairy Tale

This book feels like it's not set in any particular time, but it is most definitely is set in a particular place. The book might just as well be titled "The Gilded Life of Los Angeles".

As to time, well it must be contemporary, since we refer to websites, internet research and the like. But in its overall feel, languor and privileged isolation we might as well be back with Tom and Daisy and Jay Gatsby. The plot is old-fashioned as well. Our mid-western narrator is an innocent of sorts who is beguiled by Hollywood power/glamour and by the isolated and innocent fairy-princess-in-the-tower Matilda. Mid-westerners as the bracing, blunt and patient, and insightful outside observers and judges of decadent behavior went out of style fifty years ago, but we have one here. That's what I mean about the book having a throwback era feeling. But I like that, so that's not a criticism.

This callow youth finds himself somehow admitted into the inner circle of a dazzling crowd of Hollywood celebrities and movers and shakers. They are all genre types, but fun and very traditional types, (every male is "powerful" and every female is caustic and mysterious). Again, fine by me. There's a reason these types survive in the world of Hollywood fiction.

What the author does with these characters is very interesting. The plot revolves around Matilda, a young woman who has essentially been held captive in a gilded cage for reasons that never become very clear and under circumstances that constitute the "mystery" that our hero must solve during the course of the book. Matilda's situation is wildly implausible, (she doesn't know what a cell phone is and has, literally, never met or spoken to anyone except mansion staff). Doesn't matter. This is a fairy tale. No one thinks too hard about how Rapunzel manages her hair care.

There is romance and broken hearts and secrets and dark pasts and conflict, but while that is all perfectly fine, it isn't solely, or even primarily, what appealed to me here. Rather, the most memorable and entertaining aspects of the book are the tart bits of dialogue, and wistful memory-monologues, and deadpan and insightful throwaway lines about money and success and love and, of course, L.A.

This is in the school of sadder-but-wiser, loved-and-lost, young man romances. And it's so well written that it engages even if that's not the reader's usual diet. But, the icing and the real treat, is the character of Los Angeles - gilded, innocent, and steeped in original sin. Our hero's first drink at his first party is a Gimlet - crisp, cool and refreshing. His last cocktail, as his hopes augur in, is an Old Fashioned - dark, bitter, and so very sophisticated. That pretty much traces his arc through this tale.

So, old-school but full of delights and surprises, this left coast echo of Gatsby style was a very nice find.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)