The Silver Screen [Paperback]

Maureen Howard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

Maureen Howard deepens her inquiry into the meeting place of history and family in this stunning and accessible novel. Isabel Murphy renounced silent-film stardom to raise a family in Rhode Island. Now she is dead at 90 and her children are trying to break free of the lives she has dealt them. Joe, a Jesuit priest, has failed at love and the healing of souls. Stodgy Rita has found late happiness with a gangster who has turned state’s evidence. And Gemma, Isabel’s honorary child, has grown up to experience a strange celebrity as a photographer. A darkly comic story of guilt, love, and forgiveness, The Silver Screen is luminous in its intelligence and empathy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This meditative entry in Howard's quartet of novels inspired by the four seasons (after A Lover's Almanac and Big as Life) is flavored by hints of summer. As the novel opens, Isabel Maher, once a minor star of silent film, dies in her house in a seaside town in Rhode Island, tended by her aging children. Joe, her doted-on favorite, a Jesuit priest troubled by his flawed past, is stunned when immediately following the funeral his younger sister Rita, long overlooked as a dumpy spinster, marries ex-mobster Manny Salgado and disappears with him into the Witness Protection Program. Floundering from this double loss, Joe boards in his old hometown with Gemma; now an award-winning photographer, Gemma spent much of her childhood as an ersatz third sibling to Joe and Rita. Howard spools out the perspectives of the four main players (Bel's voice coming from beyond the grave), gradually revealing their secrets, passions and disappointments. Though Joe and Bel are better developed than Gemma and Rita, the stories of all four are anchored by Howard's lovely and precise prose and by the complexities of communication and disconnection, the roles in which we are all cast or miscast in life. Readers of the series so far will also have the pleasure of discovering further connections between disparate characters in this wide, seasonal tapestry.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Silver Screen is Howard’s eighth historical novel. Throughout her career, critics have lauded her engaging stream of consciousness style, and Silver Screen is no exception. Most critics are pleased with the tale of Bel Murphy, an actress who opts out of her own career and directs the lives of those around her with varying degrees of success. However, some reviewers found Howard’s interweaving timeline disengaging and would have preferred a more direct storyline. Others viewed her seasonal construct unnecessary, and her characters unconvincing. Buck up. After summer, there’s always autumn.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014303555X
• ISBN-13: 978-0143035558
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,322,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deceptively slender volume, September 20, 2004

By 

K. L. Cotugno (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silver Screen: A Novel (Hardcover)

Maureen Howard packs so much whallop in her books that it takes twice as long to read them than some books that are double the page length. Her encyclopedic knowledge of such a disparate range of topics makes every book of hers educational as well as fun to read. In this third element of her seasonal tapestry, she addresses, among other things, a crisis of faith, the silent film era, the witness protection program, the psychology of the photographer, all set in a story filled with introspection from many points of view. She also interweaves her previous plots (most notably, A Lover's Almanac), so that the stories gain a three dimensional aspect. Highly recommend.