Taboo - Softcover

Gage, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067178644X ISBN 13: 9780671786441

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1993

Synopsis

Kate Hamilton journeys to Hollywood during the golden era of the 1930s and 1940s, seeking stardom but unable to escape her dark past, and encounters Eve Sinclair, a ruthless former child star, and charismatic producer Joseph Knight

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

This season's dose of glamour and sin--with powerful results for those who like a double scoop of melodrama with their bedroom scenes. Golden-girl Eve Sinclair, a child star in Depression-era Hollywood, learned early that slavishly servicing middle-aged movie moguls can net a girl a long succession of box-office hits. Still, after a highly successful career in adolescent romances, Eve hasn't been able to establish a style that will promote her to the level of adult superstardom. Frustrated, turned ice-cold by ambition, Eve tries making the brass ring come around faster by betraying her colleagues and staging fascinating marriages for the press--little realizing that the real impediment to her glorious future is unknowingly headed Eve's way. Lanky, beautiful Kate Hamilton--a teenaged victim of parental neglect and sexual abuse--drifts cross- country for a while, briefly marrying a young gangster and then abandoning him when a complicated blackmailing scheme ends in the victim's death. Stunned to a zombie-like state by the crime she's helped commit, Kate drifts on to Hollywood, where in no time she's discovered by the greatest new director--handsome, brilliant Joseph Knight. Perhaps it's the shameful death in Knight's own past, perhaps it's his corresponding lack of humor--whatever the cause, an instant chemistry is established between the two, and Knight awards Kate with the starring movie role he's just taken back from difficult and temperamental Eve. Weeks later, Joseph and Kate are married, thus igniting an increasingly alcoholic fury in Eve that, after time out for WW II, will lead the happy couple to destruction. The psychology is primitive, but Gage (The Master Stroke, etc.) knows her market. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

Gage, author of A Glimpse of Stocking (S. & S., 1988) , Pandora's Box ( LJ 8/90), and The Master Stroke (Pocket Bks., 1991), here returns to Hollywood--this time in the 1930s--to write a novel that seemingly has everything: child abuse, wife beating, alcoholism, perfunctory sex, blackmail, robbery, torture, more perfunctory sex, murder, and suicide. No vice large or small seems to have been missed. Unfortunately, the three main characters--a child star, an aspiring star, and a Hollywood producer--are much too shallow and superficial to pull all this human wickedness together and make us care. A Jackie Collins clone gone awry, this book should be taboo for public libraries with limited fiction budgets. Larger libraries with more generous funds might consider purchase since it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club as a featured selection, but most readers can do themselves a favor and reread Valley of the Dolls. -- Margaret Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., Mich.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 067178644X
• ISBN 13: 9780671786441
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 253