Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Tuesday December 7, 2010
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FULL FRONTAL NUDITY: The Making of an Accidental Actor
Harry Hamlin
Scribner
ISBN 978-1439169995
275 pages
$24
Reviewed by Stephen Lowman
We know Harry Hamlin is a heartthrob (the authority on these matters, People magazine, named him "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1987), but who knew the man famous for playing an attorney on "L.A. Law" was such a scofflaw? His "sordid life of crime" began at the tender age of 4, when he routinely went outside the house to pee in the food bowl meant for the family's Dalmatian. Then, in the fourth grade, he was kicked out of school for writing a book report on "Mein Kampf." Later, while studying theater at U.C. Berkeley, he was busted for possessing drugs at San Francisco's airport. He spent several days in jail, where he was assigned toilet cleaning duty. His fellow inmates would miss the bowl on purpose.
Hamlin's frustrations with his genitals bookend "Full Frontal Nudity." It opens on an awkward bathroom encounter with a nursery school teacher that leaves him disturbed and insecure. It ends with him taking a role in "Equus," a play requiring him to drop trou and put his insecurities on full display night after night. This is a hormonal coming-of-age story.
Hamlin rarely talks about his wife, ex-wives or fatherhood. He doesn't reflect on the craft of acting. The words "L.A. Law" never appear. Instead, his focus is his college years, and he only serves up stories about the good stuff: sex, drugs and the friendships that helped to define him as an adult. Like an out-of-the-blue e-mail from an old buddy who wants to fill you in on all the crazy stuff he's been up to, "Full Frontal Nudity" is irresistible, funny and surprisingly affecting.
Stephen Lowman can be reached at lowmans(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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Adventures of hapless writers
ISBN NA
Reviewed by Nora Krug
"The Sugar Mother" and "Foxybaby" may sound like trendy child-rearing books -- or something far less innocent -- but don't be deceived. They are, in fact, two nearly forgotten novels by Elizabeth Jolley that have recently found new life. Originally published in the United States in hardcover in the late '80s, the novels are droll domestic comedies that are emotionally astute and, at times, chilling. Jolley's work has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor, Barbara Pym and Shirley Jackson.
"The Sugar Mother" (Persea, $15) is a sinister love story about a neurotic English professor named Edwin whose predictable existence is upended when a young woman and her mother become persistent houseguests while Edwin's wife is abroad. An odd symbiotic relationship develops among the three, culminating in the girl becoming a "sugar mother" (a botched term for "surrogate mother") for Edwin's childless wife. The book is as much a character study as it is a thriller, and Jolley withholds just enough information -- about the circumstances of Leila's pregnancy, for example -- to create a suspenseful finale.
"Foxybaby" (Persea, $15) is a literary romp about the writing of a play that itself reads much like a play. (There's a lot of dialogue.) The storyline has a built-in joke: Alma Porch, another bumbling writer type, heads to the Australian Outback hoping to complete her play, "Foxybaby," while teaching a course that doubles as a weight-loss program. "How could the drama she had written have anything to do with the students of the school losing weight?" Alma wonders. Readers may ask themselves the same question, as the complex narrative, which merges fiction and fact in a campy style, begins to muddy the fun. Still, Alma Porch is a well-drawn, endearing guide through a sometimes bumpy read.
Jolley, who was born in England in 1923 and died in 2007, was trained as a nurse and didn't publish her first novel until she was in her early 50s. After moving to Australia, she went on to become one of the country's most acclaimed novelists, writing 23 books, including the "Vera Wright Trilogy," also recently reprinted in paperback. Throughout, Jolley maintained a certain humility about her writing: "She saw it as her work to cook dinner for her husband and three children," noted a 1994 profile. "Her trick was to write in her head while she cleaned the floors and cut up the vegetables."
Also of interest:
The first installment of Joseph Caldwell's trilogy, "The Pig Did It" (2008) -- a caper set in the Irish countryside, starring, yes, a pig -- earned the praise of Ron Charles, who called the book "irresistible"; Michael Lindgren lauded the "arch Wodehousean tone" of the second volume, "The Pig Comes to Dinner" (2009). In the third installment, The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven (Delphinium, $13.99), the motley cast of characters -- porcine and otherwise -- search for an ending.
Originally published in 1970, "Exiles" (Farrar Straus Giroux, $15) by Michael J. Arlen, a former television critic for the New Yorker, is an evocative memoir that centers on his father, the novelist Michael Arlen, a dashing figure whose circle of friends included John O'Hara, Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway.
From previous reviews:
Set in 1943, Brad Leithauser's novel "The Art Student's War" (Vintage, $16.95) "delivers a homage of depth and texture to the churning wonder that was Detroit in its golden age," according to Peter Behrens.
Ron Hansen called "Raymond Carver" (Scribner, $20) by Carol Sklenicka a "compassionate, riveting, page-turner of a biography" of the influential short story writer.
Patti Smith's memoir "Just Kids," winner of the 2010 National Book Award in nonfiction, "is one of the best books ever written on becoming an artist," wrote Elizabeth Hand. The paperback edition includes new material -- poems, photographs and remembrances -- about Smith's longtime companion, Robert Mapplethorpe.
"Enemies of the People" (Simon & Schuster, $16) by the journalist Kati Marton, a "carefully reported" family memoir about life in communist Hungary, captures "what it is like to live in a totalitarian state," according to Jonathan Yardley.
Nora Krug writes "New in Paperback" every month for The Washington Post.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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