FICTION

Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures

by Emma Straub
Riverhead: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2012. c.320p. ISBN 9781594488450. $26.95. F
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Born into a rural Wisconsin theater home in 1920, Elsa Emerson catches the acting bug at age nine. A family tragedy cements her determination to hit the silver screen, propelling her, eight years later, to marry fellow actor Gordon and head to Hollywood. An early pregnancy benches Elsa until she is discovered by powerful move executive Irving Green. He changes her name to Laura Lamont and remakes her image. The result? Stunning success. Not surprisingly, her marriage to Gordon runs its course, and soon she becomes, happily so, Mrs. Irving Green. Through the eyes of the kind, low-key Laura, who is more lucky than cutthroat, more trusting than wise, the reader is treated to a view of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
VERDICT With this debut novel, following publication of her first short story collection in February (Other People We Married), Straub offers a charming tale spanning 50 years. Her strength is an ability to foster originality by turning her back on the stereotyped assumptions of the lives of movie stars whose backstories feed the magic. [See Prepub Alert, 3/12/12.]
Reviewed by Beth Andersen, Ann Arbor District Lib., MI , Jul 01, 2012
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