Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub (2012)

Elsa Emerson was born and raised in Wisconsin, where her family runs a summer theater company.   She grows up around theater and actors, and becomes an actress herself.  She marries another actor and heads off to make their fortune in golden-age, studio system Hollywood. She has a couple of kids, gets discovered by a studio head and becomes a minimal star--now known as Laura Lamont.

She struggles between her identities and faces all sorts of challenges. It's basically a women's picture, like Mildred Pierce, and is a pretty good rags-to-riches actor story that doesn't end when the stardom does.  The story follows Elsa/Laura from ingénue-you're-going-to-be-star-baby to mature actress to dipping her toe into television, the whole time watching Hollywood change as she does.

I really liked some of the characters and the story takes some unexpected turns which are awfully interesting, but the passivity of the main character at times left me slightly cold.  Although I didn't love it while reading it, the more it sits with me, the more I like it and the more it lingers with me.  I love the scope of her life and her career, and how she changes as Hollywood changes--a story that just isn't told very often.

The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey (2102)

Although the title sounds like a nature book, and as though it's missing an apostrophe, this is a fabulous novel about Kate, a New York City Ballet dancer, and her complicated relationship with her sister, a fellow dancer who has recently had a nervous breakdown and moved home.

The subject matter is serious, but narrator Kate is incredibly witty and deconstructs ballet hilariously. Her synopsis of Swan Lake is deliciously funny. In addition to being funny, it actually provides great insight into the mind and body of a ballet dancer and the art of dance. Not to mention the complex relationship of sisters, especially competitive sisters.

Snarky, hilarious, poignant--I really, really enjoyed this novel to the point that I'll be looking up other works by the author and even works by authors who blurbed this novel. Books like this are total diamonds in the rough; interesting, engaging novels hidden away in a flood of trade paperback original novels with enticing covers.

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (2012)

Subtitled: The True Story of a Young Woman who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up.  If you aren't sold already, just based on that awesome title and subtitle, here's what the book is about:  In 2000, a young British woman named Lucie Blackman was working as a hostess in a club in Tokyo when she disappears completely.  I mean, completely.

This true crime novel is fascinating on a number of levels.  First of all, it's got great literary credentials as Richard Lloyd Parry was the Asia editor of the Times of London.  Parry explores the 'water trade' and the complex hostess and hospitality culture in Japanese society.  He gets in depth with the complex relationships between Lucie's parents and family and friends.  He also provides an interesting look at the Japanese criminal process, and how very different it is from the American process.  And the book is just flat out suspenseful and gripping.  It's one of the best true crime books I've ever read.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979)

Written in the mid-1970s and set in contemporary times, Kindred is about Dana, a black woman in her 20s who is mysteriously pulled back in time to the antebellum South to keep saving the life of a man she eventually finds out is one of her ancestors.  Dana keeps getting pulled back and forth in time--sometimes alone, sometimes with her white husband--and her life keeps intertwining with that of her ancestor and the slaves he keeps on his plantation. 

Provides a fascinating look at the lives of slaves, as well as life for any black person in the antebellum South.  In addition, it's a very interesting look at the relationship between Dana and her husband and their life in the 1970s.  Although it sounds a bit grueling, it's also compulsively readable and amazingly well told.

In the edition I read, there was a fascinating critical essay by Robert Crossley that provided more context.  Despite being so much of its time period, the novel itself does not seem dated at all.  It's still a fascinating novel with a lot to say.

In the Bag by Kate Klise (2012)

As light and fluffy and delicious as cotton candy, this is a novel told from four perspectives: A mother and daughter traveling to Paris, and a father and son traveling to Madrid to work on an art installation. A glass of spilled wine, and two similar looking bags lead to a note left in a carry-on, mixed up bags, surreptitious email conversations, faking sickness, and planned meetings in Paris and Barcelona.

Dishy and light and fun, with realistic, charming characters.  Klise will definitely be an author I'll keep an eye out for again. 

Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook (2012)

A lovely novel--from the author of Must Love Dogs--about a woman who works for her famous guru brother and campaigns to be on Dancing with the Stars instead of him.   She has an extremely close, sometimes uncomfortably so, family and the familial relationships are realistic and touching. I love that she's pretty self-obsessed, which is a fine line to take with a character, and tricky to make a character like that both realistic and likeable, but Cook pulls it off beautifully.

Along with her own personal struggles, this is an interesting exploration of the inner workings of celebrity life (on a number of different levels). I loved this line by her dancing partner, Ilya, who is trying to get her out of her funk:  "He shrugged. 'Whatever comes at you, it's all energy. You have to take it and make it work for you. My best dances come from that place.'"  A great, realistic novel about a woman in transition with just enough humor to make it endearing as well. 

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw (2012)

A strange, meditative, but quite engaging, novel. 

A group of friends and family are involved in a car accident that results in the death of a young girl. This is not a "I Know What You did Last Summer" sort of novel, but more a novel that takes this crucial act as the springboard for following these friends and the paths their lives take after the incident. Explores their work and artistic lives, and their romantic lives as well.

Lovely, with some wonderful writing on life. I loved this quote, as divorced Carmen rejects a man who hasn't even approached her yet:

"The social road ahead looked like a bleak highway, post-apocalyptic, overblown with dust, gray and lifeless except for mutants popping up here and there." 

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (2012)

Fascinating young adult novel about a young woman working as a secret agent who is captured by the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France, and her friend, a pilot working with the civilian air force.

Divided into two parts, the first unfolds as a written confession, but all is not as it seems. The second follows the pilot after crash landing in France. Gripping, suspenseful, and chilling, this is a great story of friendship, but also of parts of World War II that we don't necessarily always hear about.

How to Get Divorced by 30 - Sascha Rothchild (2010)

Surprisingly engaging memoir (subtitled My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage). Outlines in chapters the various steps she semi-unwittingly went through to get divorced by 30 (including "Keep Your Belongings Separate", "Include Your Spouse in a Performance Where You Read Off Your List of Sexual Partners", and "Marry an Actor."

Rothchild, a struggling writer living in L.A. who married a struggling actor, has a lovely, dry sense of humor, and a realistic, healthily critical self-image (she includes quotes from her "self-indulgent" diaries).

 What I loved about this book, besides its insightful look at love and romance and what we tell ourselves we want and need, is that I ended up actually wanting to know more about her. Often, with memoirs, I'm like, enough already--I don't need to know any more about your grandmother, your birth or your sixth-grade teacher.  But her home life (as well as her romantic life) is really fascinating, with a strangely detached mother and siblings who we don't get to know well enough. And we only get little glimpses of it, as well as her semi-turbulent childhood. I love leaving a memoir wanting more! Plus, it is really funny.

The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty (2011)

Liane Moriarty is one of those authors that just speak to me.  She has such wonderful insights into character and relationships and builds such compelling, believable characters.

This novel is about Ellen O'Farrell, a hypnotherapist in her mid-30s, who just met a promising new man.  Things are going well until he tells her that he has a stalker--a woman he broke up with three years ago.  The story is told in alternating sections from Ellen's (3rd person) POV and Saskia's 1st person POV (the stalker).  Slightly quirky and very endearing, I think Liane Moriarty is a great readalike for Maeve Binchy.  Just change the setting from Ireland to Australia!  But keep the compelling characters and relationships and satisfying plots.

"I was stunned.  I'm not sure why.  I think I just never expected him to be important enough to make any significant changes in his life, but of course, he doesn't know that he's only a minor character in my life.  He's the star of his own life and I'm the minor character.  And fair enough too."

See also:  What Alice Forgot and Three Wishes.