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A Novel
by Mary Choi
Book Reviewed by:Bestselling young adult author Mary H.K. Choi debuts a brilliantly observed adult novel about mothers, daughters and the complexity of family set against the backdrop of Hollywood.
Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can't wait to move away from it, and her mother's orbit, to start over.
Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she's widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband's death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too.
Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon's former TV son and Stevie's forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the 'Big House' and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
Pool House is a course charted through the wilderness of motherhood, a story about the challenges of navigating class, fame, burgeoning sexuality, and grief as two women grapple with what it means to grow up and grow older in Hollywood.
DAY ONE
STEVIE
Stevie has been usurped. She's rounded the corner at Ralphs to catch Moon, her mother, speaking to a young tattooed Asian woman in the cereal aisle. The angle of the other woman's head and the way Moon uses her hands as she speaks, gaining speed, indicates that some deep and abiding imprinting is taking place. Moon has orchestrated this, trawled Rock N Roll Ralphs, as she cringingly still refers to the grocery store on Sunset, switching her famous face on for her dopamine hit, a hoovering vortex of want.
Stevie retreats into the endcap of the aisle, to hide behind chips the size of feed bags, and this is how Stevie is sick in the head. She has the thought, clear as day, that her mother is cheating on her. The term that springs to mind is cuckold, and while she is aware that this isn't even the definition of the word, she also yearns for her mother to a clinical degree. It was Mother Hunger, self-diagnosed but very real. And her circumstances were a perfect storm of absence,...
Moon was once a Hollywood ingénue. Now that she's nearing 50, the roles have dried up, and she lends out her lavish home via a short-term rental site in order to pay the mortgage. She and her 20-year-old daughter, Stevie, live in the cramped, dirty pool house while their own home plays host to an unending series of guests. When a loved one dies, Moon reaches out to her friend Adam, a former co-star in his 30s, for support, and he insists on coming to stay with Moon and Stevie. With a few weeks until their next tenants arrive, prideful Moon moves back into the main house, acting as if she's lived there all along. While Stevie appreciates the newfound space, having a third person join their household throws a further wrench into Moon and Stevie's already fragile dynamic. Pool House makes for a dramatic, sometimes tragic, and at times uncomfortable read. Choi is unafraid to linger on the characters' devastating or embarrassing moments. Each detail she includes feels carefully chosen, always telling us something important about the characters and the ways they perceive the world around them. Though the family's circumstances are unique, the loving but tense familial relationships are realistic and will likely feel relatable to many readers. With so many layers to each character to dissect, Pool House would make a fantastic book club pick...continued
Full Review
(683 words)
(Reviewed by Jillian Bell).
Michelle Zauner, New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart
Culturally incisive and relentlessly smart, Pool House is like Grey Gardens set against the tarnished glitz of the Hollywood C-list. It's time we recognize Mary H.K. Choi as an auteur. Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans
Pool House is a sharp, hilarious, unsparing mother-daughter story. Mary H.K. Choi speaks everything that normally goes unspoken, treating wealth, celebrity, even grief with the merciless yet affectionate point-of-view of a family member―ruthlessly ribbing one moment, and shattering your heart in the next. This book, like its author, is something very special.One of the main characters in Pool House is a celebrity actress who lists her lavish home on a short-term rental site to make ends meet. She had purchased it at the height of her fame and landed in hot water when the roles stopped coming. In real life, too, many well-known stars have spent beyond their means and gone from unimaginable riches to flat broke.
Actor Nicolas Cage famously squandered much of an estimated $150-million fortune, ending up with foreclosed properties and a hefty debt to the IRS. His lavish purchases included two European castles, a deserted island in the Bahamas, a dinosaur skull, and a $150,000 octopus.
Country singer Willie Nelson found himself in big trouble in 1990 when the U.S. government seized his assets ...
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