One way to recognize good writing is also to recognize its opposite and then to go one step farther and to say, “This is bad writing, and here’s why.” This novel is so bad that it’s useful and also a little bit entertaining to pick it apart and try to understand, “What was Elizabeth Frank doing here?”

I must admit from the beginning that I had high hopes for this novel: not unrealistically high, but reasonably high hopes. This sounded like the kind of novel I would really enjoy: a big-enough to sink your teeth into 1950s novel about Hollywood and the blacklist, written by a woman who had won the Pulitzer Prize for a biography that I had hugely enjoyed. I tucked into this novel with real anticipation of a great, entertaining read. Oh boy, was I ever disappointed.

Probably it would be easiest to write about this novel if I separate the two major elements of “The Story” and “How the story was written,” or technique.

The Story. Here’s the story in a nutshell: It begins in 1951 with Frank's protagonist, 39-year-old Dinah Lasker, wife of the successful producer, writer, director Jake Lasker. In her young and foolish days, Dinah had been a very peripheral member of the Communist party. Dinah is subpoenaed to testify--you know the question: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?" To refuse to testify would endanger her husband's career--not to mention her "wonderful life," all the things that Jake's success is able to buy for the family. Although she hesitates, there is really no question that Dinah will testify. During her testimony, without really meaning to, Dinah names her sister as a "fellow traveler," the beautiful Veevi--Genevieve Milligan Ventura Albrecht, former Queen of Hollywood and currently living in France with her successful novelist husband.

Fifty pages into the book I was already disappointed (and I should add here that the book is almost 550 pages long, so I had a long way to go). I didn’t like any of the characters. Dinah’s husband, Jake, is cad who is running around on his wife and having a high old time. No way you can like this guy. Do I like anyone so far? Not much. Dinah has been subpoenaed to testify in front of THE COMMITTEE--I guess the committee that blacklisted people in Hollywood for being part of the Communist party. Since I know NOTHING about the history the blacklist, I was left with relying on Frank to explain what it was all about. Did she? Very little.

One scene (one?) particularly set my teeth on edge--the one where the protagonist's sister drunkenly gropes her nine-year-old nephew. For the love of God. It was at that point that I said, The End--why am I still reading this book? And yet I continued, much in the same way that it’s almost impossible to turn away from a multiple car crash that’s happening in front of your eyes. The scene with the drunken aunt groping her nine-year-old nephew may be the only unpredictable move in the entire story. As I was reading that scene, what went through my mind was, "What is Frank thinking of, where is she going with this?" Ick. It wasn't as bad as I feared, but the lead up was creepy.

A New York Times reviewer referred to the plot as “wallpaper,” because of its endless repetition. What an excellent image to use for the plot of this book. Towards the end, when the reader is subjected to yet another description of Jake’s infidelity, all I could think of was, "I’ve read this scene before, written in almost exactly the same way, at least 16 times." I was never so glad to get to the end of a book.

Technique:

One of the things Frank does that I think is a little risky is to give her female protagonist a s-s-s-stutter. The device reminds me in a way of what John Irving did in A Prayer for Owen Meany--Owen had a strange, high-pitched speaking voice, so to distinguish his speech as "different," Irving wrote Owen's side of each dialogue in ALL CAPS. Irving's device didn't bother me, but I found that Dinah's stutter got in the way. Plus, I'm not sure I understood the reasoning behind it--surely there was a reason, but not enough of a reason to make me suffer through s-s-s-s-tut-t-t-t-ering through her dialogue.

I would love to know whether Frank wrote the ending during the first part of those 25 years of work on this novel or the last. Her point of view was all over the place throughout the book, but at the end it was simply out of control. For example, 400 pages into the book we are suddenly into the head of the African American maid-of-all-work who is attached to the Lasker household. Surely it would have been interesting to be inside this woman’s head before this point; to do it once and 4/5 of the way into the book is simply jarring. I’m guessing that at some point, Frank’s editor simply threw up her hands and said, “It is what it is.”

The best--absolute best--thing about this book, Cheat and Charmer, is the way the book was produced by Random House: an artfully conceived dust cover and very handsome font. I can't figure out whether they thought they really had a winner on their hands (nah) or if they were just trying to prop up a disappointing manuscript. If she was really working on this thing for 25 years, (as we are told in the dust cover blurb—“25 years in the making!”—as if that’s a good thing?), and in that time she also wrote a biography that won the Pulitzer Prize, then you have to think her editor believed they had a hot property in her new novel. The idea sounds great: her father was a Hollywood writer, director, producer during this time, so one would assume she could pull this off. When the publisher found out what they really had, it must have been a disaster.

Now I'm going to have to read some really good fiction so that I can scrub this book from my brain. ( )

"..It’s just the thing for those who would welcome a domestic saga with authentic period details and touches of Tinseltown glam, and won’t be put off by the length. "
-- Mary Ellen Quinn (BookList, 09-01-2004, p5) ( )