Writing

Writing by Diane Garrett

Treat yourself to ‘A Perfect Hand,’ Ayelet Waldman’s slyly subversive Jane Austen update

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing
A Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman

Dearest reader, I have another book recommendation for you: “A Perfect Hand.” Ayelet Waldman’s latest novel is a slyly subversive tale about the constrained choices of unmarried women in 19th century Britain and well worth diving into.

Written in a period style familiar to “Bridgerton” fans, “A Perfect Hand” centers on Alice Lockey, a lady’s maid who is reading Jane Austen’s “Emma” when she meets a visiting valet in the servants’ quarters of a country estate. Immediately smitten, Alice and Charlie become unlikely matchmakers, conspiring to bring his quirky boss and fun-loving Lady Jemima together and thereby remove obstacles to their own romance.

More than matchmaking

But while matchmaking figures prominently in Waldman’s plot, just as it does in “Emma,” the author of previous books including her “Bad Mother” memoir has more on her mind than marriage itself. That becomes clear with the introduction of Lady Jemima’s spinster aunt. Miss Sarah Bennett not so coincidentally shares a surname with the family that figures prominently in “Pride & Prejudice,” although hers is spelled with two t’s rather than one and she is decidedly plugged into Britain’s burgeoning feminist scene. Notably, “A Perfect Hand” begins in 1879, more than six decades after the publication of “Pride & Prejudice,” by which time the women’s suffrage movement was well underway in Victorian England.

Miss Bennett befriends Alice when she learns of her interest in a feminist pamphlet and encourages her to borrow her copies of books by the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. As the romance between Alice and Charlie progresses, we meet his independent older sister, along with her tenant farmer parents, who are eager for their daughter to find security through marriage.

Poor choices

But Alice begins to question all her options: As an abigail, as lady’s maids were then called, she is at the beck and call of her young mistress at all hours. And as an unmarried woman, her salary automatically goes to her father first; when she gets married, her earnings will become her husband’s property. Miss Bennett has more freedom as an unmarried woman living on her own due to a modest inheritance; amusingly, she dresses in colorful caftans at home but more subdued garb when visiting her sister, Lady Alderwick, at her estate. Even Lady Jemima, who has access to her father’s funds, feels pressure to make a match while she still commands the attention of desirable men.

Men have their struggles too

Charlie has endured his own struggles, spending years in the workhouse due to his alcoholic father’s penchant for drinking away any earnings. As an adult, he takes care of his mother and sister Mary, considering it his duty as the man of the family. Nor is he put off by Alice’s bookish ways; he delights in showing her parts of London she has never seen. Waldman portrays him affectionately, reserving her satire for his aristocrat counterparts.

Indeed, Waldman pokes fun at supposedly genteel folk of both genders. Lady Jemima, we quickly learn, has incredibly stinky feet along with questionable taste in men; Lord Wynstowe is gently lampooned for his obsession with measuring facial features. Fans of drawing room comedies will find much discourse about gowns, hairdos and jewels — along with so much more. Debates about the nature of servitude and the rights of women set the novel apart from traditional 19th century fare, with the future Emmeline Pankhurst among those making the case for equality within Alice’s earshot.

Surprise ending

The novel takes a turn toward the end that its witty narrator warns the audience is coming. Even so, it might surprise some readers: I felt compelled to immediately re-read “A Perfect Hand” to retrace its plot; happily, I enjoyed Waldman’s witty asides even more the second time. But as always, your mileage may vary.

Feminist appeal

My Quaker ancestors were suffragettes, so I have extra interest in the subject. Admittedly, however, I know less about suffrage battles in England than in America; reading about these figures in fictionalized settings just made me want to learn more about their work.

About that twist

I’m being deliberately vague about the book’s twist ending to avoid spoiling it for potential readers. But I will share this: Waldman apparently came up with it midway through writing “A Perfect Hand.” Originally, the author told NPR, she envisioned the book would be “my version of Jane Austen, my very favorite kind of book.” The author had mapped out its expected contours, she wrote in a recent Lit Hub essay, only to end up deviating from them when the unexpected twist “arrived on my imagination’s doorstep like a bouquet of perfect peonies on the first day of spring.”

Enjoy.

“A Perfect Hand,” Knopf, 304 pages, $28

Originally published on my Lititude substack.

I like serial killer books and romantasy novels now?

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

You think you know your taste by now but you, by which I mean me, would be wrong. A year ago, I would have told you no, I’m not really into cozy murder mysteries, and I would have also reflexively stated that I am not a fantasy book fan or particularly interested in romantasy, a magic-drenched genre that also exploded in popularity when I wasn’t paying attention. But, you know, each to their own.

Books like “The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” and “I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” made me realize how blinkered I was. The signs were all there, from my galloping read of the first Harry Potter book decades ago to more recent binge watches of Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” and “Miss Scarlet and the Duke” via PBS’s streaming platform. I just wasn’t paying attention. Yes, I can enjoy serial killer and romantasy novels, especially if they are well crafted.

And “Antiquarian’s” and “I’m Not the Only Murderer” are that. Each is playfully written and unfolds at a brisk pace.

A cozy murder mystery about a killer?

“I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” starts with a premise that doesn’t sound very cozy: its chief protagonist is a serial killer freshly released from prison to a luxurious North London retirement community called Sheldon Oaks. Carol matter-of-factly cops to her murderous impulses, past and present, even as she befriends a small group of fellow retirees. When a fellow resident drops dead in a suspicious manner, naturally all eyes turn to her. She races to clear her name with the help of her elderly pals.

If you’ve seen “Man on the Inside,” led by Ted Danson as a charming widower, or White House mystery “The Residence,” starring Uzo Aduba as a bird-loving eccentric who is far more effective as a detective than might first appear, you’ll be familiar with the lightly comedic tone of Fergus Craig’s novel. The author, an actor-comedian and TV writer, credits his publisher with the book’s premise but deserves praise for executing it well. Amusingly, characters reference the popularity of the cozy murder mystery genre as the story heads toward its denouement.

Classic rom-com, yet steamy

India Holton’s “Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” romantasy, meanwhile, starts in classic rom-com style as a tale of bickering Victorian era academics that can’t be in the same room without sparks flying, and it gets progressively steamy over the course of the novel. Amelia Tarrant has known Caleb Sterling since boarding school, but they must disguise their bond lest she lose her job and reputation as an Oxford professor of antiquities. So they mock bicker and set fires while handling objects with magical properties; things really get screwy when they are dispatched to an old manor house filled with ghosts and items to catalog for the British Museum.

Like Eliza in similarly Victorian England-set “Miss Scarlet,” Amelia is constantly fighting slights based on her gender but is determined to pursue her passion; Caleb is a Byron-loving dandy with a hardscrabble past. This book is the third installment in Holton’s Love’s Academic series so clearly I have some catching up to do.

Would I have gravitated toward either of these novels in less turbulent times? Hard to say, but “I’m Not the Only Murderer” certainly made me think of the Agatha Christie mysteries filling my England-born grandmother’s bookcase. I do know that reading this pair of books was a pleasant diversion from political turmoil roiling the country — and it’s always nice to find new types of books to enjoy. There are so many worthy offerings yet to be perused.

“I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” by Fergus Craig, 272 pages, $30

“The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” by India Holton, 368 pages, $19

Originally posted on my Lititude Substack, which you can visit here.

Hooked on hues: ‘True Color’ by Kory Stamper

book reviews, Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

I began reading “True Color” for the its promise of wordplay and ended up learning more about the science behind about all the hues, tints and shades around us than I ever expected to know, plus interesting factoids about margarine marketing restrictions of the past and the massive amount of work that went into creating Webster’s gargantuan unabridged dictionary in the pre-Internet age. Truth be told, I would have been happier with even more wordplay from Kory Stamper, who began working for Merriam-Webster in 1998, but she animates her research with playful prose. Reading her recently published book, subtitled “The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” made me think of my own love affair with color and the Kelly green trousers from my Connecticut youth. For more about that, read this over at Lititude — and be sure to stay for peek at my vintage copy of the “Preppy Handbook” and its description of go-to-hell-pants.

Reviewing Jay McInerney’s latest out of order

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

I have a friend that refuses to watch any movies or TV shows based on books until she has read the books first. This has never really been a ruled I have followed — sure, sometimes I make a point of reading the pertinent books first, but I have more frequently not done so — and I have been known to dip into movie franchises and TV shows midstream rather than the proper order. So I wasn’t too concerned about reading the supposedly last installment Jay McInerney’s Calloway book series first.

“See You on the Other Side” checks in with Russell and Corrinne Calloway in their 60s at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. They’ve just moved into a Greenwich Village penthouse after a decade in gentrifying Harlem, and are living comfortably when the pandemic upends their lives and those of the people around them. Over the course of the novel, McInerney deftly weaves in backstory from the previous three installments into the narrative to serve as both a reminder to readers of those books — published in 1992 (“Brightness Falls”), 2006 (“The Good Life”) and 2016 (“Bright, Precious Days”) — as well as newcomers. In my view, it’s not necessarily to have read the earlier books first, but you may want to circle back to them if you start with the last first, as I did.

I wrote more about “See You on the Other Side,” and reconnecting with McInerney’s breakthrough novel, “Bright Lights, Big City,” at Lititude.

Judging a book by its cover and other things

Books, Writing

This has been a year of circling back and I’m not sad about it. 

When an L.A. Times editing gig took a delightful turn in March, I gained temporary oversight of book reviews and reacquainted myself with the New York publishing world I left decades ago. Diving back into this world was a treat, alternately daunting (given the high volume of releases and tight review budget at my disposal) and thrilling (reading good books and well-crafted critiques). My editing duties are winding down, but I have savored the gig while it lasted, just as I told myself to do when it began.  

I also discovered a woodsy creek side trail near my new home that’s a lot of fun to run. Canopied by trees and gently rolling, it reminds me of East Coast trails I took for granted before moving to L.A. Running down the hillside trail just like I used to in my younger days has been another Proustian treat in recent months. 

But back to books. My brief marketing job at Viking Penguin (as it was then called) was not right for me in a number of ways, not least its pitiful salary, but it did give me a glimpse into the business side of book publishing, and an oft-repeated anecdote about xeroxing copies of Stephen King’s “It” manuscript along with a less-traveled one about “The Basketball Diaries” author and “People Who Died” singer Jim Carroll hitting on a co-worker’s teenage daughter.  

The actual marketing work? That had mostly faded from memory until my L.A. Times inbox started filling with pitch after pitch for coverage, jackets and titles blurring together in a sea of familiarity even as I reminded myself of the work that goes into individual book promotion. 

Happily, there were plenty of distinctive offerings in the mix. One example: “Pick a Color,” a promising debut novel with a punchy title and jacket to match. 

Souvankham Thammavongsa’s book, published by Little, Brown late last month, takes its title from the question nail salon workers ask customers as soon as they walk in the door. In just one of many amusing details, all the workers go by the name Susan to make it easier for customers while also playing on the fact that many of them can’t distinguish between similarly named and outfitted workers.  

But Thammavongsa, a Canadian Laotian poet who previously wrote a well-regarded collection of short stories, makes it clear that they all have inner lives, as downplayed as they might be for customer consumption. Most vibrant of all: the narrator, a former boxer who revels in the freedom that comes with owning her own shop. The novel didn’t hold my attention to its conclusion but I was knocked out by Thammavongsa’s voice and the world she dramatically conjured in “Pick a Color.” 

Wait, there’s more: Here is a link to my L.A. Times feature about “The Carpool Detectives,” a true crime book that reads like a novel, and guide to of five L.A. area novels released this summer. The authors for the latter graciously explained why they set their novels where they did and supplied their favorite local hangout spots, enabling readers to craft their own literary adventures as desired.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy reminder: Less can be more. And that’s a good thing

Words+Pixels, Writing

If you haven’t seen The Fall Guy yet, do yourself a favor and stream it on Peacock — but watch the original version, not the extended cut. As is so often the case, the storytelling was tighter in the theatrical version.

In a restless mood this weekend, I clicked on the extended cut tile without taking a few extra seconds to look for the theatrical version. Before long, I started to wonder if various segments were added scenes because they seemed to slow down the momentum. What can I say: Once an editor, always an editor.

Sure enough, I then watched the original version, which is 20 minutes shorter, and the pacing seemed better. To me, at least.

I get why studios release extended cuts or director’s cuts — they can potentially appeal to fans and bring in additional revenue. During the height of the DVD boom, studios would regularly release extended cuts of newish releases and those deep in their respective catalogs, in many cases targeting the fourth-quarter holiday shopping period. Those of us covering the biz would joke about the umpteenth version of The Wizard of Oz that Warner Bros., owner of pre-1986 MGM catalog, was releasing that year. Along those lines, I discovered while going through our home DVD collection a while back that we had multiple versions of The Christmas Story on our shelves, each tin with a different promo add-in such as holiday cookie cutters to sweeten the potential gift purchase.

But I have found — and your mileage certainly may vary — that original, shorter theatrical releases tend to be better. So it was with The Fall Guy this weekend.

Either way, the movie has a lot going for it — a disarming performance from Ryan Gosling as a stunt performer with hidden emotional depths and great rapport between his character and Emily Blunt’s Jody, a camera woman turned director. The script is amusing and chock-full of inside Hollywood jokes; there are more than enough action stunts in the shorter original version.

Best of all: I did not miss whatever was added to the extended edition, which to me demonstrates the craft involved during the theatrical editing process.

There are definitely examples of less felicitous editing. Harvey Weinstein earned the sobriquet Harvey Scissorhands for his propensity to aggressively cut movies that his company distributed. And as a journalist, I have experienced brutal edits upon occasion — something I try and keep in mind when I’m polishing or reshaping another writer’s work.

There is a delicate balance between allowing work to breathe and allowing it to breathe too much: Work can all too easily lose shape or energy — be it film, TV or prose.

And The Fall Guy is well worth a watch if you have access to Peacock.

Bridgerton Season 3

Yes, there are Bridgerton rugs – and I may buy one

Lessons in Remodeling, Words+Pixels, Writing

Like so many, I’ve been riveted by the presidential campaign and the gender dynamics at play. I even planned to write about it when the DNC convention ended. But what to say after so many others have already weighed in on the topic?

So I moved on to another pressing issue: the heretofore unknown to me ubiquity of celeb-branded home decor. The aha moment came while shopping for a rug to adorn my new home office in the mid-mod house we are renovating.

When we repainted my current home office a while back, I meant to get a new rug to complement the freshly applied coat of periwinkle but instead put down an old rug to protect the hardwood floors in what was meant to be a temporary solution. Years later, it’s still there.

As we spiff up what we expect to be our forever home, I am determined not to repeat that mistake borne out of indecisiveness and misplaced thriftiness. So I resumed my search, soon toggling over to Ruggable, which has been bombarding me with social media ads for an eternity.

Maybe, I told myself, the rugs will actually look good.

As suspected given the many styles of rugs that have popped up in my social media feeds over the years, there are tons of options on the site. But what really got me were the sponsored collaborations: I’m talking Goop, the late style icon Iris Apfel, Jonathan Adler and even Bridgerton.

My first instinct was to roll my eyes at the choices, especially the Hollywood tie-in. My second: to click on the Bridgerton tile — only to discover some of the rugs actually look cute.

Reader, I might even buy one.

And yes, it seems silly to even contemplate such a thing. But what if I just like the pattern?

Rational, skeptical me would have scoffed at the notion of such a purchase 20 minutes earlier. But now I’m contemplating it, even as I ponder weighty follow-up questions such as: exactly how many Bridgerton licensing deals and tie-ins are there, anyway? What’s the weirdest one out there? And: How much money does Shonda Rhimes get for them?

The scope of licensing deals has become truly dazzling over the years: I remember loving a Jungle Book movie promotional record my grandparents gave us when I was a kid, though my company man father wasn’t as keen since they got it at a gas station rival to Arco, his employer. And I have tracked licensing deals and promo tie-ins as a journalist, first homing in on marketing activity related to VHS and DVD launches.

At least in those cases, there was an obvious connection to the merch: Today’s celeb and Hollywood endorsed goods run the gamut from food items to liquor and, yes, home improvement products.

Earlier in our renovation process, I was tickled by the existence of self-stick wallpaper from TV’s Property Brothers — and ended up purchasing it to line stained kitchen shelving for a similar reason I am contemplating a Bridgerton rug: I liked the pattern better than the other options in the store. But at least that product seemed more closely linked to the duo’s work – home improvement — than a line of rugs tied into a streaming show set during the Regency era.

Even after all my years covering showbiz – and vague awareness of promotional blitzes tied to Bridgerton — that surprised me. Turns out, Hollywood branding deals really are all around us.

More Bridgerton goods:

Petit Fours, teapots and blood orange mixer at Williams-Sonoma

Various goods from The Republic of Tea, available via World Market and elsewhere

Official coloring book via a collab with Random House

Netflix merch

Plus, my favorite home entertainment story, written for Variety: The death of VHS

The vicarious amusements of salmon sperm facials and other wacky Hollywood fitness and beauty fads

Writing
Rosalind Russell working out in The Women
Rosalind Russell goes through the motions in The Women

I’m endlessly fascinated with Hollywood heath and beauty rituals. Is that so wrong?

A million years ago when I was a fact-checker for TV Guide, then based on the outskirts of Philadelphia and arguably at the height of its influence, my co-workers and I used to marvel at how goofy West Coast publicists seemed compared to their East Coast counterparts. New York publicists would bark at us when we attempted to confirm information in those pre-Web days, while those in Burbank or nearby would happily root through their trash to help us when we could catch them on the phone due to time-difference constraints in that less-connected era.

Decades after I moved to L.A., I still feel like a stranger in a strange land upon occasion — especially regarding health and beauty regimens of Hollywood denizens.

Last week, still basking in the afterglow of the Summer Olympics, I caught up with the phenomenon of salmon sperm facials, apparently something that Jennifer Anniston advocated a year ago in a Wall Street Journal feature, and not actually a new trend, just new to me, thanks to Kim Kardashian talking about it in a recent episode of her family’s Hulu reality show and publications dutifully writing about it.

This line in an L.A. mag article about Kardashian’s use of the beauty treatment really amused me:

“The 43-year-old influencer didn’t go into details about how effective injecting milt, which is extracted from fish testicles, was for producing firmer skin.”

The story goes on to explain how the sperm is harvested, in case you were wondering. As for Aniston: “When it comes to looking young, she says she’ll try almost anything once,” per the WSJ.

Vintage Betty Boop cartoon with exercise belt

There have been many health and beauty fads popularized by Hollywood over the decades, some quite ludicrous in retrospect. Watch old movies on TCM and you might see women utilizing ridiculous (to my contemporary eyes) vibrating exercise belts that supposedly melt away fat, while other trends include “Can You Feel It” aerobics of the Jane Fonda era, Suzanne Somers’s Thighmaster device and so on. Decades before superheroes took over the multiplex, studios employed fitness trainers for their talent under contract; these days, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman banter about the latter’s training for Deadpool & Wolverine to the press, including for this Variety cover story.  

There’s undeniably a dark side to Hollywood’s obsession with a camera-ready appearance: Judy Garland was famously addicted to amphetamines by the time she finished filming The Wizard of Oz at age 17, all the better to keep her weight down.

Per just one story about it: “’Most of her teen and adult life, she had been on either Benzedrine or a diet or both,’ Garland’s third husband Sid Luft wrote in his memoir Judy and I: My Life With Judy Garland.”

These days, Ozeimpic is the rage, but if you peruse midcentury women’s magazines, as I recently did while researching period decor for a home renovation, you will come across celebrity-endorsement ads for Ayds “candies,” basically stimulants designed to encourage weight loss. I’m old enough to remember mothers of my friends using these diet aids growing up, but not the celeb endorsements of talent such as Yvonne De Carlo and Hedy Lamarr; I totally missed the mid-‘80s branding issue when people confused the weight loss candy with the similarly named AIDS.

Vintage ads on YouTube repeatedly stress that there are no stimulants in Ayds, and while that might have technically true when they were filmed, the diet reducing candy and others of its ilk contained phenylpropanolamine, a chemical that can be used to make speed that was removed from decongestants and other over the counter medicine due to the risk of stroke. In 1983, the maker of Dexatrim removed similar advertising claims about the safety of PPA, as the chemical is also known, in its diet aids. By 2000, the FDA asked drug manufacturers to stop using it for diet suppressants and decongestants.

Other practices have also been dubious to downright dangerous: Remember phen-fen? It was hugely popular as a weight loss aid a few decades ago, then recalled due to concerns it caused heart problems. And, as someone with a big scar on her leg from melanoma surgery, I wouldn’t recommend you pay heed to TikTokkers’ claims that sunscreen causes cancer or reality star Kristin Cavallari’s suggestion that maybe we don’t need it to guard against skin cancer. (Seriously, protect yourself better than I did as a teen!)

The average celeb-embraced health and beauty fad is relatively harmless, however. The casual observer might think some of the regimens are ridiculous – or that these well-compensated performers should spend their money elsewhere — but does it really matter that beauty-conscious A-listers are trying them? It’s not as if Hollywood itself doesn’t see the humor in some of these exercise and beauty fads, satirizing them in 1930s movies such as The Women and a Betty Boop short on through The Player, where the Hollywood execs retreat to Two Bunch Palms for a mud bath, then quite trendy.

The relatively low stakes of these treatments make it easier to gawk at them, or even consider trying them yourself – whether you take the Paoli local or drive the 405. Stars aren’t always like us, and that is part of the fascination.

More on Hollywood health and fitness:

This Business Insider article provides a broader overview: https://www.businessinsider.com/vintage-photos-exercise-trends-2019-1

Apple TV+’s Physical, starring Rose Byrne as a San Diego mom turned workout queen, channels the era well; it is period appropriate to the point I recall wearing a denim wrap-around skirt similar to the one Byrne’s frustrated Sheila dons in the series. Here’s a story I did about the audacity of Byrne’s frequently unlikable character for Variety.

Jay the dog

Lessons from my dog: Be true to yourself

Words+Pixels, Writing

I love my dog, but he continues to confound me. Every dog that I have had before him would insistently clamor for a morning walk and breakfast and expectantly wait for supper.

Not our Jay.

He’s simply not a morning dog and lets us know — if we are paying attention — that he is ready to go outside and do his business by throwing himself on the ground and loudly wriggling around. If that doesn’t get our attention, he comes upstairs and looks at me or my husband meaningfully. Similarly, when he is ready for a meal and one is not forthcoming, he licks his empty bowl until we get the idea.

There are no set behaviors or timetables with him. Food can remain untouched in his bowl for hours or be hoovered up immediately. Sometimes he’s in the mood for a long walk, but other times he will simply turn around mid-walk and head home. Again, unlike any other dog I’ve had.

Growing up, I used to frequently go on runs with our family dog, forging ahead even in inclement weather. (Sorry, Zeke!) Jay, whom we suspect to be part whippet, can really race down the street or the length of the local dog park when he wants to. But he simply cannot be cajoled into a sustained run around the neighborhood or a trail. Believe me, I’ve tried.

The biggest adjustment for me came early in our relationship: The rescue organization warned us that Jay prefers men over women, and that has definitely been the case in our house the past two years. I was the one that campaigned for another dog for years, but Jay prefers my husband.

My ego can mostly handle it, but there are times, like during my husband’s recent absence on a business trip, when I find myself again resorting to treat bribery to get Jay out of the door for a walk. (Jay logic: if I leave the house, I might miss the return of my preferred human.)

He’s also the sniffiest dog I’ve ever had, which can be vexing if I’m in a rush. But I counsel myself to be patient, and maybe even take a lesson from him: It’s okay to stop and sniff ALL the roses if you want to. Work can (usually) wait.