Cheat and Charmer: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Elizabeth Frank (Author) "The band launched into an old swing tune and the other couples fell away, clearing the floor for Jake and Dinah Lasker, who were dancing..." (more)
Key Phrases: bubby face, known subversive, radio writer, New York, Los Angeles, Communist Party (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Twenty-five years in the making, this Hollywood novel by Pulitzer Prize–winner Frank (Louise Bogan: A Portrait) is a rich meditation on family, sex, responsibility and betrayal. Dinah Lasker, happily married with two children to successful Hollywood producer-writer-director Jake Lasker, finds her world upended when she is called to testify at the HUAC hearings of the Communist-baiting 1950s. To refuse would mean her husband will be blacklisted; to comply means she must "name" her sister, the always more glamorous Veevi, an unrepentant former Communist and actress living in Paris. Dinah's decision to testify takes place early in the novel and torments her throughout the decade or so that follows, but Frank gradually reveals that "fink" Dinah is really the only decent character in town. Former friends cut her socially; Jake philanders unrepentantly; and Veevi, who is forced to move in with Dinah in Hollywood, begins an affair with Jake. Frank adopts some of the stylistic conventions of mainstream 1950s fiction to mixed effect, but she does a stupendous job of allowing the reader inside each character's self-justifying world view while placing their actions in a larger context. Dinah, far from being a simple do-gooder, is a sympathetic and complex character, and her deep love for her downward-spiraling sister and her ladder-climbing husband is as heart-wrenching as her eventual bid for independence.
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From The New Yorker
Set in postwar Hollywood, Elizabeth Frank's first novel evokes a lost world of orange blossoms, pressed linens, and Friday-night luaus at which liveried waiters serve pineapple chunks and rumaki. It is to lay claim to such comforts that Dinah Milligan, a former chorus girl, marries a director of popular cornball comedies, and to preserve his career and the good life to which they've grown accustomed that she testifies before the huac. After naming names—including that of her sister—Dinah endures the further trials of ostracism and guilt. This leads her to probe, with keen moral intelligence, the forces that have led to her predicament—a pattern of desires that span continents, oceans, and kidney-shaped pools, and which have entangled the people she loves for most of an American century.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Random House (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400060915
• ISBN-13: 978-1400060917
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,224,024 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent Fiction, November 21, 2004

By	G. Cote (Palm Springs, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

with deeply nuanced characters who are not espcially likeable. The thing I loved about this book is that there are no easy answers. All of these characters make choices that have long reaching results. If you believe that ethics are situational; that choices are neither morally good or bad (in and of themselves), this book will make you pause. The author does an outstanding job of showing the emotional consequences of seemingly simple choices. The history of LA in the 50s (I lived it), the blacklist and the movie business all ring true. This is one of the best books I have read this year. I literally read it in a 24 hour period and was sad to see it end.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun Hollywood trasher, November 6, 2004

By	Phelps Gates (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jaqueline Susann has met her match! Reading books like this is one of those guilty pleasures that I have to confess to. And Frank knows her stuff... I felt that this was probably a roman a clef, but even without the clef in hand, the book is hugely entertaining (though it does bog down just a bit by the time you get to page 400). And the characters are, for the most part, so thoroughly unsympathetic that you can read about the disasters that befall them with perfect equanimity.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, December 3, 2005

By	Lorraine (Long Island, New York) - See all my reviews

This is possibly the best book I've read in many years. It carried me into the lives of Dinah and Jake to the point that I felt like I was living with them and feeling their laughter and pain. Elizabeth Frank may well be one of the best writers of our time. Although it took place in the 50' it is truly a timeless work of art. Bravo and Encore!!!