About the Book
From the much-loved author of Anywhere but Here and The Lost Father, a long-awaited novel--her first in ten years--about two women behind the glitter of Hollywood.
Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to L.A. so her husband can follow his dream of writing TV comedy. Suddenly, the marriage changes, with Paul working all hours and Claire left with a baby, William, whom she adores but has no idea how to care for.
Enter Lola--a fifty-two-year-old mother of five who comes to work in America to pay for her own children's higher education back in the Philippines. Lola stabilizes the rocky household, and soon other parents try to lure her away. What she sacrifices to stay with Claire and William remains her own closely guarded secret.
In a novel, at turns satirical and heartbreaking, where mothers' modern ideas are given practical overhauls by nannies, we meet Lola's vast network of fellow caregivers, each with her own story to tell. We see the upstairs competition for the best nanny and the downstairs competition for the best deal, and are forced to ask whether it's possible to buy love for our children and what that transaction costs. We see the endangerment of a modern marriage despite the best of intentions. This tender, witty, and resonant novel provides the profound pleasures readers have come to expect from Mona Simpson, here writing at the height of her powers.
About the Author :
Mona Simpson is the author of "Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, "and "Off Keck Road, " which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize of the "Chicago Tribune." She has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and, recently, an Academy Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Santa Monica, California.
Review :
"Simpson works her habitual magic, showing how love travels, ownerless and unbidden, among children who need adults, and adults who need children. 'Children, they are dependent for their life, ' Lola observed, back in Santa Monica. But so are adults. Sitting with her friends, drinking 'nonfat lattes, ice blendeds, a dozen small consolations, ' Claire asks, 'For what, exactly, were mothers always being consoled?' Simpson gently suggests an answer: for their fear of failing in their responsibilities, to their children and themselves, the extent of which they'll only know when their children grow up and tell them what they were." --Liesl Schillinger, "The""New York Times Book Review"
"Simpson's novel shows the intricacies and inequities of domestic politics . . . "My Hollywood" is a smart, topical, absorbing novel that explores the macro economy, the micro economy and the world of work, both inside and outside the home. Mona Simpson writes adroitly about domestic matters, and she knows the domestic matters." --Jeffrey Ann Goudie, "Kansas City Star"
"It is Lola . . . who holds center stage, emerging as an indelible character -- as keenly observed as the mother-and-daughter pair in "Anywhere but Here, " and as much an avatar, as they were, of the contingencies and compromises of the American Dream." --Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"
"It takes a very subtle, sophisticated and confident writer to make our most common problems come off as unique on the page as they feel at 3 in the morning. If anyone can do it, Mona Simpson, author "of Anywhere but Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy" and "Off Keck Road, " can. And does. But there's more." --Susan Salter Reynolds, "The Los Angeles Times"
"Simpson is a virtuoso at allowing her characters to convey their internal landscapes in first-person voices suffused with personality, insight, and wit . . . the real richness of "My Hollywood" lies in Simpson's gift for conveying enormous meaning inl
“Simpson works her habitual magic, showing how love travels, ownerless and unbidden, among children who need adults, and adults who need children. ‘Children, they are dependent for their life,’ Lola observed, back in Santa Monica. But so are adults. Sitting with her friends, drinking ‘nonfat lattes, ice blendeds, a dozen small consolations,’ Claire asks, ‘For what, exactly, were mothers always being consoled?’ Simpson gently suggests an answer: for their fear of failing in their responsibilities, to their children and themselves, the extent of which they'll only know when their children grow up and tell them what they were.” —Liesl Schillinger, "The" "New York Times Book Review"
“Simpson’s novel shows the intricacies and inequities of domestic politics . . . "My Hollywood" is a smart, topical, absorbing novel that explores the macro economy, the micro economy and the world of work, both inside and
