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Jack London in Paradise: A Novel [Hardcover]

Paul Malmont (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

January 6, 2009

Jack London.

The name stands for adventure.

Explorer. Social activist. Romantic. Self-educated genius. White Fang. Call of the Wild. Martin Eden. The Sea-Wolf. Generations worldwide have been thrilled by his tales, probably never realizing how true to life they really were. He did not imagine the hardships and brutality of life in the Yukon, on the high seas, or in the back alleys of Oakland. He lived them. Few men were his equal and only one woman ever fully captivated his heart. By the time he was forty, no American was more famous. And in the winter of 1915, the great writer set sail on one last adventure.

But in this story of that adventure, he is being hunted.

Hobart Bosworth -- an aging matinee idol and filmmaker -- is desperate for one more Jack London picture to save his career. Hollywood machinations have driven a wedge between him and his old friend. He has tracked Jack and his wife, Charmian, from the mysterious ruins of their once-magnificent Wolf House across the Pacific to the volcanic islands of Hawaii. The Jack London he finds here is a man half mad with visions, a man struggling with the ghosts of his past, the erotic temptations of the island paradise, and his own wolflike nature.

Now Hobart's original goal -- to save his studio -- has become a desperate struggle to save his friend and preserve the icon he has become. With or without Charmian London's help.

A romantic novel of sweeping passions and raw adventure set against an unforgettable, sultry backdrop, Jack London in Paradise vividly imagines the last year in the life of a legendary man nearly everyone knows about, but few actually know.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The salad days of Hollywood intersect with Jack London's final days in this spirited but loquacious imagining of the author's volatile relationship with real-life actor and filmmaker Hobart Bosworth. It's 1916, and Bosworth, director of half a dozen highly successful films of London's works, is desperate for a hit to bail out his sinking studio. His only recourse is to travel to Hawaii and ask his estranged friend for an original script to film. London offers a somewhat unlikely adaptation of his prehistoric epic, Before Adam, for which Bosworth gives a dry run as a short-lived stage vehicle cast with the local natives. Malmont (The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril) crafts an entertaining buddy story, but as the novel's focus shifts from Bosworth to London, the plot wanders distractingly all over the map and dissipates its dramatic impact in a surfeit of subplots. Some judicious edits could have made this novel as taut and lean as one of its subject's tales. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Although his classic novels may be out of fashion these days, the adventurous life and legendary exploits of Jack London live on. Malmont, best-selling author of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (2007), fictionalizes London’s last hurrah in this interesting if somewhat muddled re-creation of his final year. Holed up in Hawaii in 1916, a morphine-addicted Jack is sought out by studio owner and former friend Hobart Bosworth. Bosworth, the director of several successful movie adaptations of London’s novels, needs a new hit to resurrect his flailing studio but must first mend some fences with his old pal and overcome the reservations of Jack’s kooky wife. Malmont does a good job communicating the dissipation and desperation of previously powerful men, but the extraneous subplots impede the narrative flow. Still, London makes for an arresting subject, and Malmont paints an adept portrait. --Margaret Flanagan

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (January 6, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1416547223
  • ISBN-13: 978-1416547228
  • Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,490,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I work in advertising in New York City, though I live in rural New Jersey. I've written a couple of cool novels, with a sequel to the first one on the way. I'm also the writer of the DC Comics version of Doc Savage.

As much as I love writing, I would also dig being a Disney Imagineer - I like the idea of creating virtual story events that put the guest in the starring role. So when you see my favorites, you'll see a lot of Disney stuff.

 

Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Great for Jack London fans, OK for others, October 9, 2011
This review is from: Jack London in Paradise: A Novel (Hardcover)
I'm a Jack London fan. This novel held my interest from beginning to end, and I found it a fascinating evocation of his life and times. It thought it was well-written. I had two problems with it. The first is that the storyline doesn't satisfy. Perhaps the great compliment I can pay Malmont is to say that it is a fault he shares with Jack London himself, who is at his best in his short stories. The second is the problem one always has with fictionalized biography: what's true and what isn't? Now, personally, I have always felt that it would be dramatically right if Jack had burned down Wolf House himself, one day when the White Logic was on him, so it pleased me when he does so in the book. But one still wishes for an afterword detailing what parts of the novel have a legitimate biographical basis and which are the author's imagination. I fear I might be absorbing misleading facts along with the colorful depiction of time, place, and personality.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Alas, What a Dismal Failure of a Novel !, July 25, 2009
This review is from: Jack London in Paradise: A Novel (Hardcover)
How I so much wanted to love this book. I plowed through it, hoping that it would do justice to the life of such a great man! But it was not meant to be. I was hoping that the author would create a story larger than life, as Charles Gorham did for Honore Balzac in his novel "Wine of Life." "Wine of Life," a novel about Balzac, enlivened the life of Balzac to the point that one could almost believe that the author may have been the reincarnation of Balzac himself. But no, alas, this novel of Jack London was a dismal failure.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Portrait of an American Giant, January 5, 2009
By 
Ross Morrison (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Jack London in Paradise: A Novel (Hardcover)
Paul Malmont's first book, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, was a throwback pulp romp filled with pulse-quickening adventure and an unlikely history lesson on early genre writers. With his new book, Malmont shifts gears and gives us a beautifully written fictional account of the last days of Jack London, a writer who has long been hard to pin-down by critics. We begin by looking through the eyes of Jack's associate, a womanizing film mogul who's hit the wall. The second part of the book shifts to concentrate on Jack and his relationships with his wife as well as his adopted locale and culture, Hawaii. Malmont's account of the relationship between Jack and his wife is nuanced and complicated and I think stands out as the strong point in a very good story. The settings and descriptions of Jack's take on Hawaii and its people are absolutely haunting. I found myself caught up in this man's world well beyond what I expected when I picked up the book for a quick read. Anyone who wants to get into the head of one of America's arguably greatest and definitely most controversial writers should pick this book up.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
white lilac
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jack London, Paul Malmont, Hobart Bosworth, San Francisco, Wolf House, Beauty Ranch, Martin Eden, Los Angeles, Professor Homer, Swift One, Nature Man, Glen Ellen, New Year, Frank Garbutt, Ernest Darling, Wayne Holdings, The Sea Wolf, Harry Strange, Beach Walk, Paramount Pictures, Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, Valley of the Moon, Wolf Larsen, Razzle Dazzle
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