1930s
40s
A01=Cathleen Schine
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Austria
Author_Cathleen Schine
automatic-update
beach read
Category1=Fiction
Category=FV
coming of age
contemporary
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
dual timeline
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_historical-fiction
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Greta Garbo
Hollywood
humor
Language_English
literary fiction
Nazis
PA=Available
pandemic
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
refugees
softlaunch
Venice Beach
World War II
WWII
Product details
- ISBN 9781250805904
- Weight: 448g
- Dimensions: 154 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 17 Apr 2023
- Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Julian Künstler comes from New York City to L.A. like many a lost twenty-something: to find a job writing in the entertainment industry. But this is 2020 and his temporary visit turns into an extended stay, trapped by the lockdown in a little house in Venice with his glamorous, eccentric, and ancient grandmother. Ninety-three-years old, Mamie came to Los Angeles from Vienna at eleven with her parents in 1939 among a wave of Jewish musicians, directors, and intellectuals escaping Hitler. As the months roll on, she begins to tell Julian her stories of the eminent emigres she’s known and the magical world they inhabited as their old world was destroyed - people like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, and Greta Garbo. Not quite all her stories, however. The pandemic isolates Julian from his world, but from Mamie he learns of the world that came before him and how much the past holds of the future. A tender, sharply wrought comic novel about exile, the power of stories handed down and handed on, and the power of stories held secretly in the heart.
Cathleen Schine is the author of The Grammarians, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and The Love Letter, among other novels. She has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
