Out of Brooklyn – Neil Diamond: His Life, His Music, His Passion by Laura Jackson

Neil Diamond is one of the most successful singer-songwriters in American popular music, the winner of multiple Grammy awards, a Kennedy Center honor, and a Golden Globe. He's been inducted to Songwriters and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame. Some of his songs, including "I'm a Believer", and "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" were huge hits when covered by other artists. 

As a long-time fan, I was interested in reading this book that takes him through about 2010. There wasn't a lot of new territory covered, but it did make me want to revisit his music catalog with the hope of hearing some  albums and watching some videos that were new to me. 

I wouldn't call this biography particularly insightful, but it was a quick and easy read, and includes some attractive photos. 

 

Writers and Artists under Fire: Red Letter Days by Sarah-Jane Stratford

The Red Scare of the 1950s destroyed or derailed the careers, personal lives and reputations of many prominent people working in publishing and entertainment. Being denounced as a Communist, or suspected of having Communist or Socialist political sympathies affected the famous, including writers Lillian Hellman, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, and directors Martin Ritt, Lee Grant and Jules Dassin, but average working Americans, especially union members, Jews, and African-Americans who were working for change in organizations like the NAACP were caught up in the mania and arrested, jailed or called to testify before HUAC, the now-notorious House Un-American Activities Committee.

In Red Letter Days, Phoebe Adler is a young woman trying to make her way in the bohemian atmosphere of 1955 Greenwich Village. After growing up poor on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she worked in an aircraft factory during World War II, as many women did, and made her views on equal pay for women known. Phoebe's ambition was to become a writer, and she had finally achieved some minor success with scripts for the new medium of television. Then the unthinkable happened – she was blacklisted, fired from her job, branded a Red, and told to sign a loyalty oath...

Phoebe's parents had passed away and she helped support her older sister Mona who had been ill from birth with a rare disease. She lived in a facility where she was an object of medical research in exchange for her room, board and care, but Phoebe contributed money so Mona had her own room and some extras. The two were very close and Phoebe worried about Mona's gradually deteriorating health.

When Phoebe found herself jobless and in danger of arrest, she went to Mona for guidance. Mona advised her to get her things together, and buy a ticket on the first ship to London that she could. Phoebe reluctantly agreed and with her small amount of savings, and some help from her best friend Anne, she fled across the pond on the Queen Mary.

Hannah Wolfson was also a former New Yorker, living in London with her husband and two young daughters. Both were journalists, but Hannah had found a new career in TV and started a company to produce programs for ITV, the commercial competition to the BBC. 

Hannah was sympathetic and took Phoebe on as a script girl. Hiring blacklisted employees was risky, but Hannah had a number of them using assumed names. The TV show they were producing was meant for the British and American markets, so the credits could not show any blacklisted individuals. Gradually Phoebe settled into the job, and became close to Hannah, her friends and associates. Hannah invites her to call Mona each Sunday from her apartment when rates are lower – Phoebe has no phone and the calls are very expensive.

Things go well for Phoebe at first. She sells a few scripts to Hannah, and meets a charming man. While she is always fearful of being deported, she feels relatively safe in sympathetic Britain.

Hannah's program becomes a great success once it airs and her future looks bright until her husband shifts from supportive to cold. They divorce, painfully for Hannah, but the show still thrives.

Gradually, it becomes clear that neither woman is truly safe from investigation, and Phoebe is arrested by American agents...

Author Sarah-Jane Stratford has done the research and referenced real-life events and the lives of some actual individuals, constructing a compelling novel with a fast pace and plenty of tension that will keep you turning the pages till the very end. Be sure to read the Author's Note for a complete experience. 

Windy City Newswoman: White Collar Girl by Renée Rosen

In 1955, Jordan Walsh, a recent journalism school graduate, tries to break into the newspaper business as a reporter, but is stymied by the rampant sexism of the era. She lands an entry-level job at the Chicago Tribune, where she works on write-ups of weddings and other events for the society pages, and along with her other female colleagues, edits recipes under a shared pseudonym. From day one, she chafes at the bit, wanting to do more.

Jordan comes from a literary/journalistic family: her mother is a published poet and her father is a journalist working on a novel. Her brother, Eliot, was an investigative reporter until he died in a hit-and-run accident two earlier, leaving the family bereft and broken. Jordan is determined to follow in Eliot's footsteps, but also to make a name for herself.

Many famous real-life names dot the pages of this novel where they are worked in as friends or colleagues of Jordan's parents, but they add color and texture to the story and don't feel like simple namedropping. Actual events of the period concerning politicians and criminals are also part of the stories that Jordan and her fictional colleagues pursue, which add further authenticity.

Renée Rosen's descriptions of the Chicago of the time feel spot on. The seedy bars, diners and dirty streets are very evocative, and of course, everybody smokes everywhere and uses pay phones. It's easy to imagine Jordan confronting cops, political hacks and others...along with her incredibly sexist male superiors and co-workers.

The novel is a fast and compelling read, and covers Jordan's family problems and romantic entanglements as well as her ambition and work. She sounds like a woman that many readers will recognize, if not in themselves, but in the older generations of women who worked so hard to succeed in a man's world.

The author is very careful to provide documentation for the adjustments to the historical timeline, and how she managed to effectively merge real and fictional events. Well done, Renée Rosen.

Note: strictly coincidentally, I recently read and reviewed another novel by Rosen, What the Lady Wants,  also with a Chicago setting, quite enjoyable but not as fast-paced and snappy as this one.  I'll be checking out more of her work shortly.

A World Apart: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Wonderful. Lyrical. Haunting. I could hardly put this book down.

A young white girl, barely old enough to go to school, is gradually abandoned by her family members, and is left to fend for herself in an isolated shack outside a tiny town in the marshlands along the the North Carolina coast, circa the early 1950s.

Catherine, called by her nickname, Kya, was the youngest child of a couple whose lives were a struggle. They descended into poverty and despair resulting from what much later became known as PTSD, and alcoholism, violence and depression drove away the older children, their mother, and the next to youngest child, leaving Kya alone with her father, who after some periods of relative calm, eventually disappeared.

Kya had a deep love of her surroundings and the wildlife that resided there. She had learned some skills from her mother, father and Jodie, her last brother to leave, and with her native intelligence and her father's boat, she made her way. She remained reclusive and wild, but over time she formed a close bond with Jumpin', the African-American man who ran a small business selling gas and basic provisions to shrimpers and other boaters, and his wife, Mabel. A few others in the town were aware of her situation and helped her in their quiet way, but never letting on – like the truant officer who brought her to school for one day, but left her alone after she ran away from the taunts of her classmates. They called her Marsh Girl and made cruel comments about her, as children do.

Tate was a young boy who had been a friend of Jodie, became aware of Kya living on her own, and gradually won her trust. He too, had a deep appreciation of marshlands, its birds and water life. As time went on, he taught her to read and brought her small gifts, like a rare feather for her collection, but later her first bakery-made birthday cake after finding out the date through the town records.

Kya grew into a beautiful teenager, and on one of her visits to town for supplies, caught the eye of Chase, the town's golden boy – the richest, most popular and most athletic big fish in a very small pond. It's not hard to guess that this ultimately would not end well...but what follows is not entirely the usual trajectory of events, and this is the story you must read for yourself.

Author Delia Owens is wildlife scientist and the author of non-fiction books in her field, making her well-prepared to present the milieu of her first novel. It is truly an extraordinary book, and the only question I have is what she might produce next. Bravo, Ms. Owens for this amazing fiction debut.

Fifty Years of Fashion, New Look to Now – by Valerie Steele

It would be wonderful to find a sequel to this book that would pick up from 1998-on, or where this volume left off. Perhaps author Valerie Steele will bring out a revised version a few years from now and call it Seventy-Five Years of Fashion. I can only hope so.

Steele's book includes well-researched commentary and excellent photography of illustrative styles from the collection of The Museum at F.I.T. (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York. The book not only explores the fashion industry starting with The New Look that immediately followed World War II, but it also opens a window into the changes in culture and society that spawned the fashions of the times.

All the major designers are covered: Christian Dior, the creator of The New Look, Cristóbal Balenciaga (generally known just by his last name), Jacques Fath, Yves St. Laurent, Missoni (the Italian family known for their knitwear), Jean-Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and others. 

The trends of each decade are thoroughly addressed but the writing is never ponderous nor at the opposite extreme, breathy. This is a scholarly book but it is very accessible and readable for anyone with an interest in style and culture.

There is no doubt that the twentieth century and the nearly two decades that have followed were strongly impacted by the events and hardships of World War II. The world order and political scene were vastly different before and after the war. The fashion industry and its subsidiary fields were greatly affected and a system that once thrived in Paris was decimated. Attitudes were upended and with the advent of less formal codes of dress (the reactionary modes and ideas of the 50s notwithstanding), and expansions in consumerism, the world became a very different place. 

Steele explores it all, from changes in business structures. Where there were once individual designers working in their ateliers with their staffs of highly-skilled workers and showing their couture collections in their salons to a small group rich clients and the fashion press, we learn about what became a huge business of conglomerates selling ready-to-wear less costly lines and licensed designer names on everything from perfumes and cosmetics to costume jewelry, shoes and products for the home. 

Steele also covers phenomena like the advent of Swinging London and the music business, as British fashion designers took over in the early 60s, the Hippie Movement of the late 60s, on to the excesses of the 70s (probably not the best decade for fashion), the power looks of the 80s, and in the 90s, the neutrals of American designers like Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis. One can only wonder what she'd think about the ongoing 70s revival that's popular with young people in their teens and twenties and is a breath of nostalgia for the rest of us.

New York, New York, circa 1958: Three-Martini Lunch by Suzanne Rindell

It's always fun to read a book in which you recognize places you've been... and this novel, set in 1958 Manhattan, was chock-full of scenes set in familiar restaurants and bars, some of which still survive. For a time, the lead female character, Eden Katz, even lived where I did when I first moved to the city (no, not in 1958) – the Barbizon Hotel for Women, which was located at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street. The author has done a good job of capturing the nuances of Manhattan life, as it was back then and remained until around the mid-80s, when the city began to recover from its slide into the bankruptcy, crime and blackouts that marked the 70s.

The main characters are involved in the publishing world during the heart of the period that was chronicled so well in the eight seasons of Mad Men. There was not too much difference in the way that business was conducted in the big publishing houses and the leading ad agencies. Men, white Christian men, made the money and the decisions, and nearly all the women were secretaries. Jews were barely tolerated, and African-Americans hardly ever appeared in such rarified settings.

Eden Katz came to New York from Ft. Wayne, Indiana with dreams of becoming an editor. Cliff Nelson is the son of one of those very successful editors and is living a beatnik lifestyle in the Village while he tries to write but gets distracted by the temptations all around him. Miles Tillman grew up in Harlem, is a scholarship student at Columbia and a bicycle messenger, and is trying to find out more about his deceased father, a veteran of both World Wars and a member of an honored African-American troop. How these disparate people intersect is the story and it is quite the page-turner, very much in the tradition of mid-century chroniclers of New York, with a little Herman Wouk and John Cheever, and a lot of Rona Jaffe, and perhaps a few others thrown into the mix.

It kept my interest and the movie marquees started lighting up as I read. It's a good book for a rainy long weekend, a little old-fashioned yet still contemporary... since young people hoping to make it big in their chosen profession continue to come to New York. I hope they always will.

PS: one annoying anachronism that should have been caught by the editor – nobody addressed women as "Ms" in 1958. You were Miss or Mrs. and there were no other choices.