Nothing but a Smile: A Novel [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: weekend sally, steve amick, shop bell, Uncle Len, Ann Arbor, Art Institute (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Amick's solid follow-up to The Lake, the River & the Other Lake gives the reader a remarkable portrait of postwar America. When Wink Dutton is discharged from the army in 1944, he has little to his name besides his Purple Heart. His prospects change unexpectedly, however, when he meets Sal Chesterton, who has been running her family's camera shop while her husband serves in the Pacific. With business struggling, Sal comes up with a plan: she shoots sexy self-portraits and sells them to girlie magazines. As Sal and Wink's friendship develops, she lets him in on the venture, and the pinup business keeps them afloat and provides an easy segue to a complex romance after Sal's husband is killed in combat. The backdrop is captivating in its detail, and bold in scope: Sal and Wink's story plays out against wartime struggles, the Chicago underworld of the '40s and '50s, HUAC and the Red Scare and the postwar migration of Americans from the cities to the suburbs. This divine love story is as much about Sal and Wink as it is about America in that era—a great story, well told. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Illustrator and cartoonist Wink and photographer Chesty are lucky to be covering the war in the Pacific instead of fighting in it, yet they’re not immune to disaster. Hungover and careless, Wink manages to mangle his drawing hand. Demoralized and uncertain of his future, he returns to Chicago and looks up his buddy’s wife, who is single-handedly running a Loop camera shop. Money is tight, so with pluck and pragmatism, she starts a covert side business. Sal is a buxom blond who knows her way around a camera and the darkroom. Her best friend is a leggy beauty with an artist’s eye and a naughty imagination. Together they produce cheerful girlie photos, and soon Wink joins in, leading to romance and danger. Such tough work Amick assigned himself in his second novel: a deep immersion in 1940s girlie magazines and the art of Gil Elvgren, the Norman Rockwell of cheesecake. But the bawdy humor, lavish period detail, hectic plot, and pulp ambience are actually camouflage for a serious inquiry into war, poverty, extortion, misogyny, and free speech. Distinctive, seductive, and incisive, Amick’s coy and sexy tale of American know-how and self-reliance celebrates justice, creativity, and love. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (March 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307377369
• ISBN-13: 978-0307377364
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,876 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Stays With You, May 11, 2009

By	Elizabeth Bartlett - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is just fabulous. It's smart, funny, sexy, and heartbreaking all wrapped up and splashed across roughly a hundred short chapters. It's a love story in a historical setting without being schmulzy. The characters are iconic of the time without losing their honesty, the prose and POV choices are clever, and the historical elements are great to watch play out. Amick has a great sense of relationships, how two people who know everything about each other can still be vulnerable to misreading the signs, and can write easily from the perspective of both a man and a woman. "Nothing But a Smile" is a great read!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Risky business in an old-fashioned read, September 12, 2009

By	Sal Nudo (Champaign, Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

On the surface, the plot of "Nothing but a Smile" may sound seamy. It's a tale about a Chicago-bred wife, Sal (short for Sally), who poses in "girlie" photos as she waits for her husband, Chesty, to return from the war. Said photos are taken by Chesty's good friend Wink, a war buddy who was honorably discharged and received a Purple Heart for the noble act of getting his fingers chopped off while in a drunkenly hung over state on a ship in the Pacific. Add into the equation Sal's friend Reenie, who also poses in the forbidden pictures, and things appear even seedier.

The thing is, though, "Nothing but a Smile" is actually more charming than sleazy, a comfortable time-warp read that isn't exactly a page-turner but definitely has its moments. Bad things happen to these people along the way, but essentially, it's an endearing Midwestern story about budding, photogenic friends in their mid-20s who are creatively trying to find their way in life. What starts as a spontaneous idea by Sal to make a little money on the side turns into a brief amateur enterprise that's moderately successful and, ultimately, leads to future plans in which everyone involved manages to build a new and satisfying life.

Vivid descriptions about the old-time art of photography -- when prints were placed in chemicals in darkrooms and slaved over to make just right -- also make this an interesting read, especially in an age when the average cell phone can store numerous random photos at the simple click of a button. It wasn't always so easy.

Though Steve Amick's sometimes pedestrian and clunky prose, short chapters and constantly changing character viewpoints aren't the stuff of legendary authorship, he does manage to aptly capture American life in the 1940s. Popular catch phrases of the time, the substandard treatment of women, a housing shortage after World War II and a paranoid Herbert Hoover-run government all infiltrate the book with surprising effectiveness. The ending is a bit of a slog to wade through, but overall, "Nothing but a Smile" is a pretty good read that covers a risque subject in a refreshingly old-fashioned way.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a classic movie, May 12, 2009

By	E.H. - See all my reviews

I seldom buy new hardcover books, but after reading a review of "Nothing But a Smile" in People magazine, I was hooked. The book is written in the easy old style of a classic movie from the 1940s. I could easily see movie stars from that era playing the roles in the book. It's an old fashioned romance, and very well done.

Amick is able to write from both the male and female perspectives easily and mostly believably. It's a little corny in spots, a little modern in others. It's a love story, but it's also a nice piece of historical fiction. You really do get absorbed into the lives of the characters and the emotions they must have felt living through the time they did.

I don't know how much of Sal and Wink's story was based on real people, or if they came completely from Steve Amick's imagination. However, the poses, the photos, the card backs and other scenes were very clever, and you really do have to appreciate the creativity, regardless of the inspiration. For such risque content, the book is actually very wholesome.

I almost gave this book four stars. The end seemed to wrap up at a much faster pace than the rest of the book. By the time you get to the last fifty pages, you're so involved with the characters you want to know the last details as much as you knew all the previous details of their lives. I feel Amick could have elaborated more, particularly in the epilogue. However, I feel that way about most great books I read, so I guess that means this was another great book. I left my rating at five stars if only because a book was finally written on this subject and it turned out almost exactly as I hoped it would be.