The Age of Dreaming
A Novel
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In 1960s L.A., a Japanese American former silent film star investigates a mystery from his dark past in this novel by the author of Southland.
Jun Nakayama was a silent film star in the early days of Hollywood. By 1964, he is living in complete obscurity, until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, tracks him down for an interview. When Bellinger reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind, Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to movies. But he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past and uncover the events that abruptly ended his career in 1922. Like the changing social and racial tides in California—and the unsolved murder of his favorite director.
Spurred on by his fear of a potential “misunderstanding,” Jun begins to track down his surviving acquaintances from his years as Perennial Pictures’ greatest star. In the process, he recounts the lives of several other figures from the silent film era: Elizabeth Banks, the working-class girl from St. Louis who becomes a major Hollywood diva. Nora Minton Niles, the dreamy, childlike teenage star controlled by her ambitious mother. Hanako Minatoya, the elegant actress and playwright who serves as Jun’s inspiration and foil. And Ashley Bennett Tyler, the British director whose guiding hand turns Jun into a star. But what Jun ultimately discovers is far more complex and personal than even he could have imagined.
The Age of Dreaming alternates between the 1960s and the height of the silent film era, telling the story of a man caught between worlds. Jun must try to please both his Japanese and American fans, and while he is adored by moviegoers—especially women—he’s despised by public officials, who see him as a threat to American power and racial purity.
Praise for The Age of Dreaming
“With Nabokov-worthy sentences, characters so real our hearts begin to beat with theirs, and a story as deeply mysterious and riveting as any the Hollywood it conjures up could have created, The Age of Dreaming is a masterpiece of the sort that doesn’t just seduce the reader—it leaves you transformed . . . . Revoyr deserves to be counted among the top ranks of novelists at work today.” —Jerry Stahl, author of I, Fatty
“Brilliant and original . . . . The carefully restrained voice of its narrator recalls Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.” —Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winner
“Cunning . . . . Revoyr beautifully invokes Jun’s self-deceptions and his growing self-awareness. It’s an enormously satisfying novel.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her cunning follow-up to Southland, Revoyr returns to L.A., this time to when Sunset Boulevard was "just a dirt road" and Jun Nakayama was a famous silent film star. Prompted by a journalist's visit in 1964, 42 years after he left the screen for good, Jun revisits his youth in Japan, his discovery at L.A.'s Little Tokyo Theater, his rise to stardom and the scandalous events that led to his abrupt retreat from public life. Mixing real people with fictional characters like principled Japanese actress Hanako Minatoya, troubled starlet Elizabeth Banks (not the one in Seabiscuit), ing nue Nora Minton Niles and dashing director Ashley Bennett Tyler, Revoyr creates a vibrant portrait of a time when the film studio was "a place of serious work." As Jun reveals the secrets he has kept for decades, he uncovers new twists in his own history and comes to terms with other painful experiences he has repressed, namely his loneliness and the effects of the anti-Japanese racism he mistakenly believed he could overcome by being "as agreeable and American as possible." The occasional awkward transition between present and past notwithstanding, Revoyr beautifully invokes Jun's self-deceptions and his growing self-awareness. It's an enormously satisfying novel.
