Review by Booklist Review
Los Angeles, 1956. Queer Hungarian American screenwriter George Curtis has become a de facto member of the retinue of fading star Madeline Morrison. Madeline collects people instead of stamps and parties relentlessly, involving George, his young lover, Jacques, and his coworker and favorite American, Jack Turner, and whisking them away to Las Vegas. At this point, the novel flashes back to 1944, the year a 17-year-old George arrives in America determined to become an artist, quickly becoming part of a group of avant-garde artists and other creative types. The novel later returns to Las Vegas and then moves to Paris for its melancholy conclusion. Nathan's second novel doesn't quite live up to his excellent debut, Some Hell (2018), coming across at times as overwritten and even a bit pretentious. But he writes memorable turns of phrase ("It was a night made of paintings or the very best dreams."), and George is a well-realized character whose interesting life will hold the reader's attention.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The titillating latest from Nathan (Some Hell) portrays the life of a gay Hungarian Jew in Hollywood. In 1956, George Curtis is drawn to fellow screenwriter Jack Turner, the sight of whose body stings George "like the opulence of the homes in Beverly Hills." After George and Jack visit actor Madeline Morrison in Malibu, Jack tempts George into acting on his attraction, sparking a romance that offers both men the promise of happiness. From there, Nathan flashes back to 17-year-old George's arrival in 1944 New York City as György Kertész. The young refugee cruises for sex in public toilets at a time when men were entrapped and arrested for doing so, and eventually becomes involved in a bittersweet affair that prompts him to reinvent himself and move to California. Back in 1956, George, Jack, and Madeline attend a debauched party in Las Vegas that turns dangerous after many partygoers take copious amounts of LSD. Nathan nimbly interweaves the period's zeitgeist into the narrative, including the Budapest Revolution and the fear of the nuclear bomb. The hopscotch structure dilutes some of the emotional impact, though each episode captivates, including a finale set in 1960s Paris. This portrait of an artist in the making dazzles. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nathan's novel begins as the story of a semicloseted gay screenwriter in 1950s Hollywood, but the scope grows to encompass issues of identity, social mores, and the survival of humankind. The dense first 100 pages recount a 1956 turning point in George Curtis' life. Aware of his otherness, the gay, Hungarian-born Jewish émigré tries to keep a low profile, away from the Hollywood limelight. Then the Hungarian uprising against the USSR compels him to write a serious political/philosophical essay. Leaving his studio job scripting B movies, he takes refuge at the glamorous mansion of a married but sexually predatory pair of movie stars. George's sardonic wit--tinged with nostalgia, loneliness, and loss--sets a moody noir tone as drugs, sex, and Cold War paranoia of nuclear dimensions rock his previously buttoned-up life. Suddenly the narration shifts to New York City in 1944. Sixteen-year-old George arrives as a parentless refugee. The roots of his adult tendencies--his capacity to reinvent himself as needed, the double life he maintains as a homosexual, his fear of his capacity for deep affection, his (or the author's) tendency to pontificate about concepts like the ethics of destruction--become evident, and readers realize with surprise that the George who was so apparently jaded in California was not yet 30 years old. Poor and uneducated, adolescent George thrusts himself into Manhattan's bohemian world of artists and writers. He thrives until a combination of misfortunes, including a tragic love affair, forces his escape to California. Now hopscotching past California, the narration picks up in late-20th-century Paris, where 40-year-old George has moved and, for a while, achieved a satisfying life. Though George struggles as a gay man and an immigrant, the message here is that the fear of loneliness and annihilation are universal and existential while happiness and love, however fleeting, are available to all. Ambitious, perspicacious, and humane. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
