Cheat and Charmer
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Twenty-five years in the making, a first novel that has already been compared to The Sun Also Rises and The Last Tycoon, Cheat and Charmer is certain to be one of the most admired literary debuts of the season. Written by Pulitzer Prize—winning biographer Elizabeth Frank, Cheat and Charmer is a masterful and richly detailed work of fiction–a Tolstoyan novel of marriage, sisterhood, art, politics, compromise, and betrayal set in Hollywood, New York, Paris, and London of the 1950s.
Dinah Lasker grew up in the shadow of her sister, Veevi, a stunning beauty and emerging star who enchanted both the Hollywood set and its imported New York literati. But Veevi’s home was also a hotbed of political activity, owing to her marriage to Stefan Ventura, a Bulgarian filmmaker and high-profile Communist. At the end of the 1930s, when things go badly for him in Hollywood, Ventura and Veevi flee to Paris and into the lengthening shadows of Hitler and fascism.
Cut to 1951, when Dinah is subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which threatens to ruin her husband, Jake, and derail his successful career as a Hollywood writer, producer, and director unless she cooperates. Can Dinah live with herself if she names Veevi–whom she both loves and loathes–in order to save her husband and preserve her idyllic married life? The choices Dinah makes set in motion an unforgettable chain of events. Like Anna Karenina, Dinah must face the consequences of her choices and her needs.
Written with elegance and style, Cheat and Charmer grippingly dramatizes the interior lives of Dinah, Veevi, Jake, and their social circle. Spanning decades and following complex characters on their impassioned pursuits through America and Europe, this is a novel of grand scope, about love and deception, idealism and accommodation, the lies we live, and the truths we cannot avoid.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenty-five years in the making, this Hollywood novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Frank (Louise Bogan: A Portrait) is a rich meditation on family, sex, responsibility and betrayal. Dinah Lasker, happily married with two children to successful Hollywood producer-writer-director Jake Lasker, finds her world upended when she is called to testify at the HUAC hearings of the Communist-baiting 1950s. To refuse would mean her husband will be blacklisted; to comply means she must "name" her sister, the always more glamorous Veevi, an unrepentant former Communist and actress living in Paris. Dinah's decision to testify takes place early in the novel and torments her throughout the decade or so that follows, but Frank gradually reveals that "fink" Dinah is really the only decent character in town. Former friends cut her socially; Jake philanders unrepentantly; and Veevi, who is forced to move in with Dinah in Hollywood, begins an affair with Jake. Frank adopts some of the stylistic conventions of mainstream 1950s fiction to mixed effect, but she does a stupendous job of allowing the reader inside each character's self-justifying world view while placing their actions in a larger context. Dinah, far from being a simple do-gooder, is a sympathetic and complex character, and her deep love for her downward-spiraling sister and her ladder-climbing husband is as heart-wrenching as her eventual bid for independence.
Customer Reviews
Loved it!
A very long book, a saga, with a very well developed story and great characterization. I enjoyed it very much. Would love to see more fiction writing from this author!