S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Glen David Gold, author of the best seller Carter Beats the Devil, now gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate, heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.
Sunnyside opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world's last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America's doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complications - studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother.
The narrative is as rich and expansive as the ground it covers, and it is cast with a dazzling roster of both real and fictional characters: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Adolph Zukor, Chaplin's (first) child bride, a thieving Girl Scout, the secretary of the treasury, a lovesick film theorist, three Russian princesses (gracious, nervous, and nihilist), a crew of fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants moviemakers, legions of starstruck fans, and Rin Tin Tin.
By turns lighthearted and profound, Sunnyside is an altogether spellbinding novel about dreams, ambition, and the dawn of the modern age.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - Derek Brown
A bold and engrossing tale that offers the reader an excellent sketch of a nascent Hollywood, its venerated star, and the harrowing events of the world surrounding them. Sunnyside is a refreshing look at a pivotal moment in our history, one that has shaped, in large part, our love of film, our role on the world's stage, and our enduring culture of celebrity. Full Review (members only, 1213 words).
Kirkus Reviews
Historical but not didactic, in the manner of the master of the genre, E.L. Doctorow, and more completely realized than Gold's debut.
Booklist
Starred Review. The cascade of historic details Gold generates is breathtaking, but it is his electrifying characters, wildly inventive action replete with comedic mishaps and witty dialogue, and trenchant insights into the absurdity of war and the mythic dimension of movies that gather force and velocity to make this such a hilarious, brilliant, and transporting novel.
Library Journal
Starred Review. Gold has written another joyous comic novel that blends fact and fiction to the point where you won't really care what's true and what's not.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. An elegant blend of reality and fiction, war drama and Hollywood glamour ... Entirely satisfying: to borrow an idea from Chaplin’s great personal-artistic quest in the book, it’s a work as good as Gold.
San Francisco Chronicle Sunnyside pops and crackles with cleverness... but it's also a bit ramshackle. Gold is a wizard at making things up and mixing them in with things not made up. But sometimes the mixture is unstable.
Entertainment Weekly
Gold is a masterful, even heart-stopping storyteller, but not, alas, an equally amazing writer.
Los Angeles Times Sunnyside feels, at times, like Dickensian streaky bacon, a bit of a baggy monster. But it has, too, those wonderful Dickensian qualities, namely, the capacity to startle, to thrill, to evoke laughter and, ultimately, to bring tears to the eyes. No reader who sticks for the ride is going to forget it.
The Washington Post Sunnyside offers a wealth of wit and pathos and insight, and who better to guide us through this transformational moment in history than the Little Tramp?
Christian Science Monitor Sunnyside definitely suffers from overabundance. But it’s full of intelligence, ambition, and generosity – and there aren’t too many novels that are so stuffed with those that they bulge at the seams.
Junot Díaz
A breathless stupendous novel that recreates both a young brash America on the verge of becoming itself, and Chaplin, one of its most bewitching quixotic citizens. From lighthouse to Hollywood to starlets to war to stardom to madness to genius Gold's startling narrative carries us across the world and back. Gold proves himself yet again to be the hungriest craftiest funniest and most humane novelist we have.
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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I was sorry to see that there were so few reviews. I started reading COAL and could not stop. The only thing I am going to say is that I wish ...
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The tragedy, the sorrow, the loss, is almost too much for me to recommend this; on the other hand Mistry made me believe I knew these characters. I ...
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Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound(Mar 18 2010) Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't...
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Amazon's e-pricing threats(Mar 18 2010) With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online...
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Sunnyside
BookBrowse - 
(members only, 1213 words).
San Francisco Chronicle
Junot Díaz
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