Laura Frankos

I'm hard put to say how much I enjoyed Broadway Revival. I loved it all the way through and read the last chapter and Epilogue through tears of pure joy.

David, composer, actor, lyricist, playwright, director, producer, is able to take modern meds from 2097 back to 1934 to save Vincent Youmans from his TB and George Gershwin from his brain tumor. He has other interventions projected too. In the meantime, he makes a life for himself in the musical world and with the people who become his family in the Village. I'll read this again to follow up on songs I don't know already from the likes of Gershwin, Youmans, Porter, Kern, Weill, et al. and to long for the ones that didn't make it into our universe.

My one question, and it may be a fact of history rather than the responsibility of the author, is why there is no mention of the Harlem jazz scene: no Apollo Theater, no Duke Ellington, no Sarah Vaughan (my candidate for Best Voice of the Century). David mentions Ella Fitzgerald once. I also found a sentence to the effect that Youmans, in common with the rest of Broadway, didn't like swing. Oh well.

At any rate, anyone who loves the classic Broadway through the Golden Age should scamper to get a copy of this satisfying book NOW!… (mehr)

That's one in the "get revenge" column for Author Laura Frankos. I read this book because I saw Harry Turtledove tweet about it not winning a Sidewise Award. The subject, the provenance, the main character and his grief at losing the love of his life to preventable cause... well what the hell else does an old theater fag need to drop a lousy $4 on an alternative history that features exactly no damned majgickq and no fucking aliens either (sorry Dr. Turtledove)?

I didn't count on being kept in agonizing suspense while the easy, crummy ending I was dreading seemed to get closer and closer... while I dreamt about the music and lyrics that the goddesses never granted us... while I raced through the last 15% praying I wasn't going to be furious...and then ending with the very things I most wanted to see happening only through bucket of tears.

Embarrassing ones, too, the kind you can't explain to the civilians around you, who don't know or care what you have invested in the narrative or the conceit. The dining room will be interesting tomorrow... I expect a lot of side-eye.

I expect I know why this excellent story didn't win the Sidewise Award... the subject is way too weird for the WWII-obsessed field to accept its merits and the audience wouldn't know that there were actual changes to our timeline made. But if imagination and execution were the only sort criteria, this story would've won hands down.

I'm old and cynical and unwilling to give the hoi polloi a fair shake, but I think anyone who bothers to read my book reviews will like this story of a grief-addled survivor of a love cut short by addiction... twice!... will resonate to this love letter to Love, creativity, and the incredible power of focus, and should go spend the few bucks to experience Author Frankos ripping their heart to shreds.

But in a good way.… (mehr)