Taboo

Gage, Elizabeth

3.82 out of 5 stars

186 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 1558009051 ISBN 13: 9781558009059

Publisher: Dove Entertainment Inc, 1993

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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.

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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 Publishers Weekly

The sizzling wit of Gage's bestseller A Glimpse of Stocking is missing in this gushing potboiler about Hollywood in its heyday, the 1930s and '40s. Having left home at age 16 and later escaped a smooth-talking criminal of a husband, Kate Hamilton drifts toward Tinseltown, where her offbeat beauty and lofty disinterest in stardust act as catnip on a few key players. Among them is writer-director-producer Joseph Knight, who started off as a lowly roustabout before vaulting to glory as a creative force to rival Orson Welles. Kate's success seems assured when she lands a role in Knight's new film, replacing Eve Sinclair, a celebrated actress grown bitchy with unrequited love for the ubiquitous Knight. Ah, but Kate's past--and Eve's ire--catch up, and the resulting conflagration threatens her fame and her marriage to Knight. These cardboard characters are painted in implausibly bold colors: while still a nobody, Knight comes up with an idea for a movie, determines that "all the truly gifted writers had long since been snapped up by the major studios," decides to write it himself and turns out a screenplay worthy of an Oscar. Though Gage lavishes these pages with Hollywood glitter and the requisite dabblings with booze, drugs and sex, the dramas she sets up lack emotional resonance and often simply fall flat. Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild featured alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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