Mercury Pictures Presents, Anthony Marra
Mercury Pictures Presents, Anthony Marra
List: $22.50 | Sale: $15.75
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Mercury Pictures Presents

Bestseller

Author: Anthony Marra

Narrator: Carlotta Brentan

Unabridged: 14 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/02/2022


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Winner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction • The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini’s Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that’s a true joy to read.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

“A gorgeous book . . . sublime.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Guardian, Booklist

Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest.

Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.

Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate—and her own.

Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on September 02, 2022

Reel People of the Real War “Mercury Pictures Presents” is a five star triumph. It is a rich and complex story, deep in characterization, yet there is no lagging, no time when you think exposition has created a slow detour. Everyday people populate the pages, people who have their hands full just dea......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on May 02, 2022

Marra’s first novel , A Constellation of Vital Phenomena focuses on the Chechen War with Russia and perhaps is more relevant at this point in time as it is reminiscent of the horrific treatment that the people of Ukraine are experiencing now. However, this novel is a story about a different war, whi......more

Goodreads review by Canadian Jen on August 17, 2022

I adore Marra and his masterfully skilled writing. It’s the 1940’s. Immigrants have arrived to LA from pre war Europe. Movies become the propaganda for the war. At the centre, the story of Maria. An immigrant herself from Italy. Her reflection on a disastrous mistake haunting her through life. The char......more

Goodreads review by Judy on July 06, 2022

I picked this book up because I recognized the author from earlier books. With the cover Mercuryt Pictures Presents, I thought it would be a story about the movie studio and the movie business. And it was to an extent. Regardless of what I expected (I should have read the blurb so I would have known......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on August 08, 2022

It's been six years since publication of Anthony Marra's last book, and finally the wait is over. With Mercury Pictures Presents, he carries the themes and style he'd honed in his two earlier masterpieces, and has created another. I'd thought the WWII era had been so thoroughly milked that further r......more


Quotes

“A gorgeous book . . . sublime.”The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

“With Mercury Pictures Presents [Marra] cements himself as one of the most deft and most enjoyable novelists working today. . . . I could go on for pages about my admiration for Marra’s technique and execution . . . but what I most recall is the general warmth of feeling every time I . . . spent time in that world.”Chicago Tribune

“Epically entertaining  . . . You’ll laugh, you’ll cry in the marvelous Mercury Pictures Presents.”San Francisco Chronicle

“So much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Marra returns with a sprawling story that ushers readers through the streets of pre-World War II Rome. . . . But as compelling as the story and characters are, the real star is the writing. Marra’s ability to capture and render both the joy and pain of life . . . remains unmatched.”—NPR

“Crackling with wit . . . Marra’s new novel is as epic in sweep as a movie set yet delineates the inner workings of the human heart with a miniaturist’s precision. Mercury Pictures Presents explores the endless give-and-take between life and art, the cost of integrity, and the ways we must make peace with the past in order to move toward the future.”—Celeste Ng

“Marra has been compared to Nabokov, Kafka, and Orwell. The word 'brilliant' gets used in all his reviews. Mercury Pictures Presents is a great literary read.”—Ann Patchett

“Funny, verbally inventive and, ultimately, very moving, Mercury Pictures Presents is a wonderful novel.”Sunday Times UK, Book of the Month

“Marra has ascended to the top of the literary ranks.”Booklist (starred review)

“Intimate and sweeping, heartfelt and satirical, one of the funniest and most moving novels I’ve read in a long time.”—Jess Walter

Mercury Pictures Presents has all the breadth and power of an epic and the attention to detail of an intimate conversation. I read it in a state of admiration for the beauty Marra has wrung from the English language.”—Sara Nović

“A novel so rich and wondrous . . . that there’s only one word for Anthony Marra: genius.”—Sally Mann

“A writer of boundless talent. . . . A singularly pleasurable read—smart, sad, hilarious, and always full of heart.”—Nathan Hill

“Achingly beautiful . . . You laugh, then you sigh, then you weep.”—Luis Alberto Urrea

“I laughed aloud many times, even as I marveled.”—Aimee Bender

“An energetic, wildly comical tale . . . Amid all the action and plot twists, it's also a serious examination of immigration and xenophobia, identity and impersonation, and art, propaganda and censorship.”BookPage