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A constellation of vital phenomena movie11/16/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “So much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke.” -Ron Charles, The Washington Post You’ll laugh, you’ll cry in the marvelous Mercury Pictures Presents.” - San Francisco Chronicle spent time in that world.” - Chicago Tribune but what I most recall is the general warmth of feeling every time I. I could go on for pages about my admiration for Marra’s technique and execution. “With Mercury Pictures Presents cements himself as one of the most deft and most enjoyable novelists working today. sublime.” - The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.” Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate-and her own. Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest.įifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Guardian, Booklist sublime.”- The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that’s a true joy to read.”-Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini’s Italy to 1940s Los Angeles-a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.Although it is largely told from the perspective of people who work in an industry that subsists on illusions, this brilliantly original novel projects a beam of light through the dark days of one of the bleakest periods in history. Although Mercury is a minor player in Hollywood, barely managing a meow while the MGM lion roars, the coming of the Second World War changes the studio's fortune-for better and for worse. The company churns out B movies on shoestring budgets under the watchful eyes of Artie Feldman and his brother Ned, two men who don't particularly like each other. The pretense of art is more elusive than Garbo at Mercury Pictures. Marra showcases his expansive talents in this beautifully written, deeply researched wonder of a novel. She is estranged from her mother, her father is confined in a prison colony in Italy, she endures a complicated relationship with a young Italian acquaintance whom she blames for her father's fate, all while persevering at a middling film studio where she is literally trying to make a name for herself. Rising above it all is recent immigrant Maria. The myriad characters struggle against racism, xenophobia, and political oppression as America enters the "Good War" and Hollywood is conscripted to deliver indoctrination films. The novel follows emigres and prisoners and people in power as they scheme with and against each other on a turbulent stage. An intricate tapestry of characters whose lives connect over continents and time, Mercury is set in Fascist Italy of the late 1930s and early 1940s, and in Hollywood at the same time. His second novel is another triumph by a writer whom we will be following for years to come. Marra's first book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, could stand as the crowning achievement of a writer's career. ![]()
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