The creator of "Wild Palms" and the author of "Force Majeure" again turns to one of his favorite topics--Hollywood--in this name-dropping satire about three friends and second generation actors who co-star in "Starwatch: The Navigators."
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
It's a short, sharp book that puts a dagger right in the heart of Hollywood. [3 Jan 2005, p.33]
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Favorable
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Washington Post Carolyn See
Bruce Wagner's earlier Hollywood novels, however brilliant, have been hard-edged, even snarly. But "The Chrysanthemum Palace" is both tender and tenderhearted.
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Favorable
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Booklist Carol Haggas
Though his plot is often convoluted and laborious, Wagner's satire is at once biting and broad based, his wit both razor sharp and slyly subtle. [15 Dec 2004, p.709]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Karen Campbell
It's diverting, even involving, but not particularly emotionally engaging; the characters seem more flash than real blood and guts.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Although Wagner is smart enough to keep the enjoyably soapy story short, the inevitable high-drama conclusion does prompt some longing for the apocalyptic surrealism of his earlier fiction. [15 Nov 2004, p.1068]
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Favorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Mr. Wagner could have been a lot more subtle about his story's outcome, and he could have refrained from telegraphing the novel's ending to the reader from the start. Still, this novel ratifies the achievement of ''I'll Let You Go,'' albeit in a minor key, demonstrating once again that Mr. Wagner is as gifted at making us care about his characters as making us laugh at their exploits and self-delusions.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Henry Alford
Wagner marries his dagger-sharp, lapidary wit to an emotionally arresting narrative whose phaser is set on scorch.
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Mixed
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The New Yorker
This slender novel lacks the kaleidoscopic frenzy of Wagner’s "cell-phone" trilogy, and its more limited range gives his relentlessly up-to-the-minute pop-trivia references a somewhat airless feel.
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Mixed
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Village Voice Jori Finkel
In tone, anyway, The Chrysanthemum Palace is The Great Gatsby for an Entertainment Weekly age.
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Mixed
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Houston Chronicle Eric Gerber
There is a good deal of dishy, snide fun here... But by the time he concludes with a play for pathos worthy of a Greek tragedy, it feels like just another schlocky installment of True Hollywood Story.
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Mixed
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San Francisco Chronicle Amy Johnson
Wagner's attempts to create complicated, dimensional characters, though admirable, are not successful.
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Unfavorable
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Los Angeles Times Richard Eder
A heavy-handed melodrama of outsized figures and their shriveled children. [6 Feb 2005, p.R2]
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