I, Gloria Grahame, Sky Gilbert
I, Gloria Grahame, Sky Gilbert
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

I, Gloria Grahame

Author: Sky Gilbert

Narrator: Joel Froomkin

Unabridged: 5 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/02/2021


Synopsis

A professor of English literature writes the autobiography of his fantasy alter-ego, wanton movie star Gloria Grahame, while his own sexual desires go frustrated.Denton Moulton ? a shy, effeminate male professor ? lives inside his head, where he is really a long-dead movie star: the glamorous Gloria Grahame, from the golden age of Hollywood. Professor Moulton is desperate to reveal Gloria’s shocking secret before he dies. Does he have the right to tell this woman’s story? Who, in fact, has the right to tell anyone’s story at all?A scandalous, humorous novel of taboo desires and repression, I, Gloria Grahame alternates between Gloria’s imagined life with her film-director husband, Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause, and Denton’s increasingly frustrated real-life attempts to produce his own work of art: an all-male drag production of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The novel takes us from high-strung film sets to dark bars and the puritanical offices of government arts granting agencies, where Denton runs up against the sternest warnings that he may not, in fact, imagine himself as someone else, even in art.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Davida

3.5/5 stars This is one very unusual novel, and yet, still fascinating. Not sure it was one I would have normally read, but I am glad I tried something different for a change. Here's my review. [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by Daniel

After reading all the conflicting reviews, I approached this novel cautiously...and ended up with mixed feelings. The story about the professor longing for a new identity -- yet consumed with his current obsessions -- is easily the best part of the story. But the story he is apparently writing about......more

Goodreads review by Maria

A shy, effeminate professor with low self-esteem tries to come to terms with himself by writing the fantastical autobiography of a now deceased film star, who is anything but shy, but also carries great trauma. Connecting the autobiographical narrative, in which the professor is the protagonist, and......more

Unfortunately I tried my best to get into this little fictional mess but I didn't managed to successfully connect with it. The two story lines seemed very very confusing and poorly developed, the characters unappealing and the drive behind the plots very stale. The gay professor was frustratingly ann......more

A clever and complex reflection on repression, libido and sexual orientation. A represssed man fantasizes about being a famously unrepressed woman, in a world that seems more hostile than ever to male desire for other men. The narrator doesn't fit into any contemporary politics.......more