Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub
| Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub | |
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| Category: Historical Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: Well worth reading if you're a particular fan of Hollywood in the 1920s, but this one holds less appeal to a wider audience. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 320 | Date: April 2013 |
| Publisher: Picador | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1447203209 | |
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Small town girl Ella Emerson loves acting - her father runs the Cherry County Playhouse, and she's always been captivated by the stage. She loves watching the actors perform, and getting involved in shows where she can. Following a family tragedy, though, she moves to Hollywood to marry an actor and reinvents herself as Laura Lamont. Quickly, she outshines her new husband. Can her success, and their relationship, last?
I really liked the first couple of chapters of this book, and really fell for Ella as a lead character. She's sweet, immediately likeable, and I loved her relationship with her family - so when tragedy struck, it was very effective, especially considering how early it happened. Unfortunately, once the move to Hollywood took place, I found the book faltered. It became rather predictable and the other characters introduced were nowhere near as interesting as Ella's family were. Similarly, the setting of Hollywood didn't seem to spring off the page in the same way that the small town setting did in the very early part of the book. That said, there are definitely some real positives here. In addition to an excellent central character in Ella/Laura, it's well-plotted apart from being too easy to predict, and I liked Emma Straub's writing style, which is easy to read.
All in all, though, it brings to mind a quote often attributed (wrongly, I believe) to Abraham Lincoln. People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. That pretty much sums it up - if you really want to read a book about a small town girl making it big in Hollywood in the 1920s, you should probably check this one out. If the setting's not a particular interest of yours, though, there's nothing to make this stand out as an especially good read.
One book set in the 1920s which I think everyone should be falling over themselves to read is recent release The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell.
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