A Glimpse of Stocking [Paperback]

Elizabeth Gage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

Annie Havilland is Hollywood's rising young superstar. Christine is New York's highest-paid call girl. Without knowing it, the two astonishingly beautiful young women are sisters--locked in a twisted web of deceit and ambition shaped by their cruel mother! "One of the summer's steamiest books."--USA Today. HC: Simon & Schuster.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous author of this hefty first novel sensationalizing Hollywood's dark and seamy side initially displays a flair for tall tales, but the narrative loses its credibility entirely by the halfway mark. Lured by the prospect of a screen test, Annie Havilland falls prey to Harmon Kurth, head of International Pictures and a sexual sadist of no small order. Her brutalization at his hands only convinces Annie to try harder; returning to New York, she hones her acting skills and plots revenge. A few years later, Annie takes Hollywood by storm when she's cast in a steamy movie by the renowned, reclusive Damon Rhys. Into this orbit comes Christine, a sophisticated call girl with a penchant for violence, a legacy from her vitriolic mother, Alethea, who systematically sought to crush her daughter for a sin committed by the shadowy man who was her father. In Damon, Annie and Christine find a father figure, until the relationship changes in a way that threatens to destroy them all. Heaping doses of sex and violence fail to cover up the flaws of a wooden cast of characters driven by a string of events that rise less from their pasts than out of a bottomless well of coincidence. First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 708 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (Mm) (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671677241
• ISBN-13: 978-0671677244
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW Holy cow!, February 18, 2000

By 

Michelle Matheson (Navarre, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Glimpse of Stocking (Paperback)

The first time I picked up this book I was 18 and found it in a closet of my uncles house. I sat down and started to read, 5 hrs later I was still sitting there and reading the last chapter. This book has everything in it, sex, intrigue, romance, horrer, incest, there are moments that make you smile, and others that make you cry, all in all the charachters become real, you love when they love, hate when they hate, and get angry with them at all life's injustices.Once you start this book it is hard to put down. An in the end the ending will blow you away, it is shocking! I have owned several copies since then and in 9 yrs I still consider it one of my favorite books, one word for you if you buy this book,ENJOY!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting, erotic, intelligent, merciless, sad, well written!, June 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Glimpse of Stocking (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite novels. I have owned several copies. It has everything. Romance, intriuge, an exotic and foreign way of living. Real but imaginary, and extraordinary characters and an ending so shocking to have left me breathless and in tears. I feel close to Christine, as if she were someone I knew, or someone I recognized in myself. I collect all of Ms. Gage's work now although I believe this to be her best work and unsurpassible in quality. I will never loan it out.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underground, August 17, 2010

By 

Doreen Appleton (Scottsdale, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Glimpse of Stocking (Paperback)

5.0 out of 5 stars Underground, July 24, 2010
By Doreen Appleton (Scottsdale, Arizona) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Intimate: A Novel (Paperback)
Simon & Schuster did not want Elizabeth Gage. Joni Evans, then the wife of Dick Snyder (who later ran Little Golden Books into the ground, as was reported by Publishers Weekly many times), rejected the book on behalf of S&S. Bill Grose, the head of Pocket Books, somehow got around her, and S&S exercised its topping privilege to win Jay Garon's auction and acquire A GLIMPSE OF STOCKING for $511,500. Garon's contract was a good one: the author retained all rights except North American. With foreign sales, the earnings reached $1.4 million.

S&S didn't want Gage because they had Jackie Collins, that great talent, and Judith Michael, the nerdy husband-and-wife writing team. They were also offended that this first novelist from Glenview, Illinois, had so much more talent than their own authors.

At a lunch at the Four Seasons Restaurant, Michael Korda and his then special friend Trish Lande tried to get Gage and her husband to change to a writing husband-and-wife team like Judith Michael. Gage and her husband refused. S&S walked out of the Four Seasons while the author was in the ladies' room.

Later Korda tried to get Gage to take a lower royalty than the one specified in the contract. Gage refused.After six weeks of pressure. S&S caved.

The editing, by a faceless group of editors, was finished, the book was ready to go to press, when Korda turned the script over to Lande, saying "See if you can find anything wrong with this."

Lande covered the manuscript with coffee stains and cut out chapters which were crucial to the momentum of the book. In a long-distance conference call to Gage in Hawaii, Korda told her, "You have to make Trish's changes. You have to understand why it is so important that you surrender to us."

Gage lectured Korda and Lande over the phone about Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby, which which Fitzgerald stops the action to simply give the names of the people who visited West Egg that summer. "My chapters are far more important to the movement of the story than Fitzgerald's Chapter 4."

Chastened, furious, Korda said "I guess Trish and I should read those chapters again." In the end the chapters stayed. The book became a New York Times bestseller, But S&S did not forgive. They withdrew Gage's second novel, Pandora's Box, from the stores after one week "for lack of interest."

Jay Garon, furious, moved Gage to Pocket Books, where she received big advances but zero promotion.

As a result, Gage never became a brand name novelist, but her five novels for S&S/Pocket and her two books for Mira remain cult classics with avid fans around the world. Her unique combination of violence, sex, and psychological depth set her far above the Krantzes and Collinses and Bradfords of the writing world.