Mercury Pictures Presents

One of my favorite book reviewers called this a "masterpiece," and I couldn't agree more. This book covers a lot of ground, but in a nutshell, it's the story of old Hollywood, an industry founded by Jews during WWII. Mercury Pictures, one of the big movie houses at the time, becomes a refuge for immigrants from all over Europe escaping the war. We follow Maria Lagana, whose father is confined to San Lorenzo after being accused of anti-fascist activities. She and her mother flee to California only to be classified as an "enemy aliens" and limited to a 5-mile radius of their homes. We also meet Eddie Lu, a Chinese-American actor who is offered roles as a Japanese villain while at the same time the Japanese are being forced into internment camps. The war propaganda machine in Hollywood is robust. We also meet Anna Weber, a miniature model-maker from Berlin who fled and left her Communist parents and Nazi party ex-husband and son in Germany with heartbreaking results. And those are just a few of the stars of this show. Marra's writing is gorgeous, and while the novel primarily deals with grave topics, there is a cast of quirky, funny characters that will make you laugh out loud.

Anthony Marra weaves a magical and spellbinding piece of historical fiction set in the 1940s era of the movie business in Los Angeles and the rise of fascism and WW2 in Europe. The beauty, wit and lyricism of his prose shines as he atmospherically evokes a group of European emigres, exiles employed by Mercury Pictures, run by the man of many toupees, Artie Feldman, and his able assistant, the ambitious Maria Lagana. Maria has escaped Mussolini's Italy with her mother, her anti-fascist, defense lawyer father, Giuseppe, left behind facing political internment in San Lorenzo in circumstances that leave Maria bearing a burden of shameful guilt for which she refuses to accept any form of forgiveness. She and her mother live with her unforgettable great-aunts, the widows Mimi, Lala and Pep Moriburo, for whom love, a venereal disease of the heart, is curable through marriage.

With Mercury Pictures under financial pressures, Artie has been summoned to face the Senate investigation, accompanied by the ever reliable Maria. Maria is in love with a Chinese American actor, Eddie Lu, condemned to playing stereotypes that bring him real life dangers. A glimpse of Germany in the inter-war years is provided by the miniaturist Anna Weber, devastated by the loss of her son, Kurt, when her Nazi husband is given custody. In San Lorenzo, portrait photographer, Nino Picone, escapes, arriving in LA with a stolen identity. With Pearl Harbour and the American entry into WW2, the fortunes of Mercury Pictures change dramatically as they make morale boosting war propaganda, but the emigres are designated enemy aliens, made to feel unworthy and unwanted. Anna heads to Utah, with her miniaturist talents being utilised by the American military. The characters lives intersect and connect as we learn of their pasts, present and sometimes their future.

Marra captures this fascinating period of history with its culture, politics and economics, with his blend of fact and fiction, of a Hollywood revered for its ability to manipulate, create fantasies and fabricate narratives for a public all to willing to believe, a gift recognised by the American military in WW2 as they employ Mercury Pictures to create war fiction. The role played by European immigrants in the film industry is tenderly conveyed through the larger than life and vibrant, complex characters that Marra imagines and develops in his heartbreaking, poignant, and joyous storytelling that beguiles. It touches on sacrifice, imperfect love, loss, family, identity, belonging, guilt, ambition and resilience. This is a stellar read, a wondrous novel with oodles of humour that I did not want to end, and which I think will appeal to many readers. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Mercury Pictures Presents is such a gorgeous, generous treat of a novel - I adored every page and just wanted to keep reading. Anthony Marra's sweeping epic takes us from 1920s Italy to 1940s Hollywood and focuses particularly on the role played by different immigrant communities in cinema and America's war effort.

At the heart of the novel is Maria Lagana, who emigrates from Italy as a child while her father remains behind as a political prisoner (for which Maria blames herself); by the start of the Second World War, she is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, helping her boss (and fellow émigré) Artie Feldman avoid political censorship. Meanwhile, Maria's Chinese-American boyfriend Eddie Liu is desperate to play serious dramatic roles but is only ever cast as Japanese villains. Mercury becomes home to other European exiles who will, like Maria, be labelled 'enemy aliens', including German miniaturist Anna Webber, whose ex-husband was a celebrated director of Nazi propaganda films, and newly-arrived Italian photographer Vincent Cortese, who brings news of Maria's father.

This plot summary doesn't do justice to the richness of Marra's novel - the plot is wide-ranging and full of fascinating historical detail about the world of cinema, fascist Italy and wartime America. It touches on many issues which remain topical today, including isolationism, free speech, propaganda and conspiracy theories. It is deeply moving, particularly in its depiction of the sacrifices and compromises that characters are forced to make as a result of the times they are living in: all the immigrant characters are scarred by unshakeable feelings of guilt, loss and longing, and Marra presents these with great sensitivity and compassion.

At the same time, this is an incredibly funny novel, and I found myself grinning and giggling most of the way through it: much of the dialogue could have come straight out of a classic screwball comedy, and the narrative voice is enjoyably arch with some superb one-liners. There are some wonderfully well-drawn minor characters, such as Artie's son whose unfortunate nighttime perambulations become legendary, the enterprising undertaker who marries Maria's great-aunt, and even Bela Lugosi himself, who, in this version of events, ends up moonlighting as a Bela Lugosi impersonator called Bruce in order to make ends meet.

This really is a masterpiece - in terms of plot, writing and historical reach, it is every bit as good as Anthony Doerr's 'All the Light We Cannot See' or Nathan Hill's 'The Nix' to give just two examples. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!

A joy to read. I spread out reading it over several days because i can only read it with fresh eyes once. The writer is great at storytelling and world building. I would read any spin off novels of the other characters in the novel because I wanted to know more about them. I did not know who the author was before starting this book, but now I want to read his back catalogue and will look out for his future work.