Pandora's Box [Import] [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Gage (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 686 pages
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster; First Edition edition (1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0593020243
• ISBN-13: 978-0593020241
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,465,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is simply unforgetable., December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Pandora's Box (Paperback)

I read an excerpt of this book in a magazine, then rushed to check it out at the nearest library. I was totally blown away by these characters. You will hate to put this book down. It's one of my all-time favorites. Elizabeth Gage is a master storyteller and this is by far her best work.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars eloquent narration, July 17, 2004

By 

rony (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pandora's Box (Paperback)

i am more impressed by the narration of this book. with fluidity and eloquence, Gage manages to build up a thorough characterisation of each major persona as well as the morbid atmosphere of overwhelming doom and fate.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wrong place, wrong house, July 24, 2010

By 

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

This review is from: Pandora's Box (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.

Meanwhile, Gage went on to write novels under other pseudonyms which made a great deal of money and won publishing awards. She is now a literary novelist whose real identity is not known, and who doesn't have any problems paying the bills.

The reviews of PANDORA on this page leave little doubt about its quality. For those who admire it (Gage thought it was her best romantic book), remember what S&S did to it in 1990. As Proust said, "A good book will make its own audience." Eat your heart out, Korda and Lande. Elizabeth Gage will be around long after you're forgotten.