Customer Reviews

The Song Is You

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Megan Abbott, in her terrfic second novel, The Song is You, proves a writer with a keen understanding of hard-boiled noir and a vivid sense of the time period of which she writes. The novel instantly transports the reader to the Hollywood scene of the mid-20th Century, in all its grandeur and grotesqueness. Readers interested in (the inner workings of) Hollywood will love the sense of realism that this novel creates.

Inevitably, the comparisons will be to the work of James Ellroy (Like The Black Dahlia, The Song is You offers a fictional extrapolation of a real-life unsolved mystery from mid-century L.A.). In many ways, though, Abbott's is a quieter and tighter novel, a more affecting reading experience. Abbott deserves kudos for foregoing the use of first-person narration by a male protagonist A)because it's been done to death in this genre, and B)because the third-person perspective simply works better here. As readers, we are able to get inside the protagonist's head and experience his doubts and dilemmas as he proceeds with his investigations (rather than having a first-person narrator telling us his story in retrospect). We are on closer terms with the whole character, and not just recipients of the voice of a narrator. This, of course, only heightens the impact of the novel's ending (which is as moving as it is surprising).

I recommend this book highly not just to fans of noir-tinged mysteries, but also to anyone who appreciates good writing. Like many of the characters and settings depicted here, the prose is wonderfully seductive. Some genre fiction is meant to be hastily consumed, and some is meant to be relished. The Song is You definitely falls into the latter category.

Megan Abbott's THE SONG IS YOU may be the best throwback hard-boiled novel ever written. It's part Chandler, part Ellroy, yet all her own--a masterpiece of nostalgic longing and pulp nerve.

Abbott's fictional worlds are as glamorous and ugly as Rick's Café Américain--teeming with life, and darkness both foreign and familiar. They make you say "what the hell" and belly up to the bar, where an endless procession of compelling lowlifes and tarnished heroes file past you like a cortège, so close you can smell their breath as they whisper stories you'd swear were your own.

Her prose is bourbon straight-up; it makes your heart burn and your guts hurt, and as it goes to your head a crooked smile twists your mug and sticks. All you can do is nod, and mutter, "you're right, Megan, you've got us pegged--we're all suckers." But you hang around like a bad blind date. Why? Because somewhere in your aching marrow you know the French are right: melancholy is the sweetest emotion.

Megan Abbott has made a solid fan of me. She's smart, she's talented and she knows how to do her homework. The dark underbelly of 50s Hollywood, replete with characters whose motivations run the gamut from simple survival to satisfying their grotesque and sometimes terrifying urges, is evoked effortlessly in prose the big boys of noir can't touch. The Song is You may be a noir fan's dream, but the writing is so lyrical and precise that this book will appeal to all readers of great fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed Megan Abbott's debut novel, Die a Little, as the author so vividly described the stark amorality of 1950s Hollywood. Anything goes if it'll help you become Robert Mitchum, Carey Grant, or Jean Harlow. This second novel of Abbott's, The Song Is You, is just as good or better. Told from the perspective (very capably, too) of a blase reporter-turned-spin-doctor "publicist", the story is given in careful, bleak, and thoughtful prose as we follow our narrator "Hop" into the seedy world of blackmail, closet quickies in hopes of earning an audition, and murder.

The Song Is You is based on the real-life disappearance of Jean Spangler, a relatively unknown bit-part actress and dancer. The real-life story is fascinating, and the fictional solution that Abbott offers is artistically satisfying even though no one really knows what happened to Ms. Spangler. You'll be enthralled from the first few pages, and there's no padding or fluff in this dark, gritty story of sex and ambition. Ms. Abbott graduated from NYU with a Ph.D in American and English Literature. She is married and lives in NYC.

A seasoned hollywood publicity writer of ambiguous morality is driven to find out why an extremely sexy actress of minor roles disappeared forever one evening. Its a great start to a terrific novel full of facinating surprises and dark twists. The novel is rife with vivid characters that draw you further into the mystery. The author takes us to the hollywood back-lots of the 1950's, plus several darker places. If you are looking for something that is well-written, sexy, and smart, you must check out this novel.

I suppose that it's unfair to critique an author writing about events in 1951 when she was not present, but I insist that historical fiction should at least attempt to be accurate. I found several anachronisms that bothered me, because I was and always have been, a resident of Los Angeles. In 1951 I was a freshman at UCLA. The author refers to "one of the sparkling pink and grey high-rises in Westwood," when in fact Westwood Village was exactly that in 1951, a group of small wooden buildings. She refers to the Queen Mary, but that ship wasn't retired and moved to Long Beach until 1967. She mentions Slapsy Maxie's night club, but it became Billy Gray's Band Box in 1946. One of her characters is cautioned about being arrested and sent to County Jail, when in fact he would have been sent to the City Jail which at that time was in Lincoln Heights. More care, please, author!

The writing is of the Mickey Spillane school of violence and hard drinking. I did enjoy the story, though at times it seemed over the top and labored. Close but no cigar.

Megan Abbott doesn't exactly paint beautiful pictures, and you might not want her characters as close friends. But you can't help but care for the men and women in her novels, especially the women.This differs from DIE A LITTLE and QUEENPIN in that it's told from a masculine third person perspective rather than the feminine first person viewpoint of her other novels. It still has the grittiness. This one delves even deeper into the rotten underside of society, Hollywood in this case with a more bitter aftertaste than even Chandler and Caine. The story revolves around a studio publicist in the late forties and early fifties. Anyone familiar with the area will feel quite at home in the various locations. Well, in many of them. The author does take us inside a couple of nightspots which we are not, nor wish to be, familiar with. This uses the true-life disappearance of Jean Spangler as the center. The lead character is one of the last people to have seen her and a couple of years later is confronted with this by Spangler's close friend. The story is well told and as in the author's other stories, we eventually learn the story involving the bonding of women during this time period. Highly recommended.

The Song is You is set in Hollywood in 1951, where Gil Hopkins is a Hollywood publicist. To keep the images of his studio stars clean, he has to be one step ahead of the media, more than a little sneaky, and very manipulative. Because in this noir style mystery, everyone in Hollywood seems to get into trouble when they think no one is looking and they all have indiscretions they want hidden from the movie going public.

Hopkins is approached by a singer named Iolene, who accuses him of covering up the mysterious disappearance of her friend two years earlier. He immediately goes into high gear to make sure that everyone still has their stories straight about what happened that night. But Iolene is persistent and Hopkins' activities attract the attention of a young and determined female reporter who senses a big story. Hopkins begins to suspect that this scandal may not stay nicely swept under the rug for very much longer. To protect both his job and to save his own life, he needs to find out what really did happen that night.

I enjoyed this book. The Song is You is a vintage mystery with a heavy dose of Hollywood gossip. You want to know whether that famous actress really did make a blue movie and if so-and-so was gay. And just which entertainers are the models for the characters in question, anyway? Abbott does a great job of mingling scandal and mystery in this book and keeping the reader turning the pages to see what other salacious details will be revealed as the plot twists and turns right up until the end.

For those of you who usually avoid the noir mystery sub-genre, this is a good book to sample. It is sort of "noir lite" and very approachable - lots of good description of the times and surroundings, but without the heavy despair some noir mysteries impart to the reader.

Favorite character? Hopkins, a player who is slowly overtaken by guilt. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? Yes. Abbott paints a very vivid picture that makes me want to seek out her other works.

Megan Abbott's second novel is even more sure-footed than her first. She has created a memorable character in Gil "Hop" Hopkins, who is frustrating, poignant and glamourous. The Jean Spangler tale is a more a more obscure one than the Black Dahlia case and Abbott fashions a credible solution. A great noir. Highly recommended.

You want to look away, but you can't put it down. You feel dirty reading the story, but it invigorates you. You feel like you should judge some characters and what they do, but you're attracted to them - esp Gil Hopkins. A sordid and seedy masterpiece that will be the best book you've ever read.