Maureen Howard has long enchanted her readers with an urgent history of our extraordinary life and times. In The Silver Screen she conjures up the last days of silent movies in the story of Isabel Maher, who renounces the glamour of Hollywood and her talent. As Bel Murphy, wife and mother, she is confined to the drama of domestic life and plays it like a star. [Viking]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Howard succeeds in being at once spellbinding, humorous, and intellectually stimulating as she considers the timeless mind-body conundrum in a shrewd plot rife with the bizarre, the ironic, and the tragic, and in intriguing musings on the all-but sacred texts of Ovid, St. Ignatius, Melville, and Agee. [15 May 2004, p.1580]
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Meticulous and graceful, though some may find the allusions, dense sentences, and sometimes-opaque narrative a touch rarefied.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Ann H. Fisher
Sad, smart, and sometimes funny. [15 June 2004, p.244]
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books Caroline Fraser
Dense, difficult, at times elegant, The Silver Screen can be read with admiration, giving perhaps the most pleasure as an homage to the masterpieces that inspired it.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Readers of the series so far will also have the pleasure of discovering further connections between disparate characters in this wide, seasonal tapestry.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle June Sawyers
A lovely meditation about the fragile bond between parents and children and about having the courage to take second chances.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Richard Eder
Then there are the gorgeous webs of reflection and connection she weaves around her characters and their times. True, they can hamper movement, but putting aside the sweep of Howard's theme, which alone would make ''Silver Screen'' a work of desolate illumination, they add a whole store of individual discoveries.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Jessica Winter
Howard's pensive, bittersweet canon swims with Chekhov beauties stroking through Woolfian streams of memory-sensation.
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Barbara Fisher
Bel exerts a powerful spell on all around her.
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Unfavorable
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Washington Post Carolyn See
Isabel, Joe and Rita feel like pawns in the author's larger literary plan. To me, they fail to come alive
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