Another Item for the Things Not To Do List

Kay Thompson is one of those Hollywood characters I'd catch glimpses of when reading the biography of a star of the Forties or Fifties. When slogging through, say, Judy Garland's third "It's going to last forever!" wedding it  was easy to glance over at Kay and think she might be more interesting than the slow-motion train wreck in progress. Now Sam Irvin has put Kay in full focus and the results are generally entertaining even if Miss Thompson loses a bit of interest along with her mystery.

On the plus side we have a strong woman forging her own path in a male-dominated industry without sacrificing her dignity or her individuality. On the negative side we have Sam Irvin's unbridled prose. Irvin's ability to pack multiple cliches into a single sentence frequently put me in mind of air travelers who refuse to believe their extra large suitcase won't fit into the overhead bin. Behold:

"Somehow ... she managed to bury the hatchet, but it was a shallow grave on the edge of a slippery slope."

The book makes up for this by piling on the loony details that I find compelling. Who knew Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn had an affair? Who knew White Plains, NY once had a Bonwit Teller? Who knew you could ask your friends to help you paint tables with nail polish using those tiny little brushes? Irvin is at his best dishing the dirt. He's at his worst trying to convince readers of Kay's brilliance. I am sure my life span was decreased by the reference to Kay as "the Godmutha of Rap."

Ultimately Kay's story adds up to a long list of projects she didn't do. Literally. Plays she didn't star in. Movies she didn't make. Finally Kay takes on a major role as active godmother to Liza, supplying advice and "better gaydar" to her beloved goddaughter before coming a recluse. I guess excessive gaydar deployment will do that do you.

Boredom Comes to the Reader


 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a disappointing book by a beloved author is more depressing than a genuinely bad book by an unknown author.  Death Comes to Pemberley is such a disappointing book. Surprisingly disappointing given my love for P. D. James, especially her Adam Dalgliesh series, and my enjoyment of Jane Austen's books. Jane's suffered more than her share of exploitation of late between mash-ups, story extensions and a series depicting her as busy-body-mystery-solver, and while this latest re-purposing of her characters doesn't involve anything as nutty as sea monsters it is nonetheless a mystifying endeavor

I truly cannot understand why P. D. James felt the need to write this book but my bafflement there is miniscule compared to my total incomprehension of why she felt the need to publish it. I can't understand why, having committed to writing a book based on Pride and Prejudice she felt the need to retell the entire plot of that book in the first 10 pages of this one. Nor can I come up with a reasonable answer as to why an author with a finely honed style like James would want to play ventriloquist with another well-known style.

What really left me staggered in this book is how dull, nay, boring it is. I don't mean slow-moving, I mean actively, aggressively dull. The book focuses on proud, shy and aloof Darcy, which cuts down on the conversational opportunities. The sisters Bennet are barely present and only two of them having anything approaching a conversation. Which made no sense - a murder happens at your sister's house and you don't want to chat it over? The murder isn't interesting and all the opportunities it gives Darcy to plumb the depths of his soul just proves that Darcy isn't all that deep. The absolute nadir, however, involves one character explaining the events of the murder while allowing that another person will probably want to tell their own version. And they do. Except it's pretty much the same version. Just told twice.

To sum up, while this book does not feature zombies, it might as well have been written by one. Avoid this one.