{"id":121674,"date":"2022-08-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=121674"},"modified":"2022-08-03T16:31:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T21:31:03","slug":"anthony-marra-reads-and-signs-mercury-pictures-presents-friday-august-5th-at-530-pm-at-off-square-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/anthony-marra-reads-and-signs-mercury-pictures-presents-friday-august-5th-at-530-pm-at-off-square-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Marra reads and signs\u00a0“Mercury Pictures Presents”\u00a0Friday, August 5th at 5:30 pm at Off Square Books\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini<\/strong>‘s Italy <\/strong>to 1940s Los Angeles<\/strong>\u2014a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning, New York Times <\/em>bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Book\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like many before her, Maria Lagana<\/strong> has come to Hollywood <\/strong>to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father\u2019s arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen years later, on the eve of America<\/strong>\u2019s entry into World War II<\/strong>, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures<\/strong>, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won\u2019t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American<\/strong> actor, can\u2019t escape the studio\u2019s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria\u2019s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European<\/strong> \u00e9migr\u00e9s: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father\u2019s past threatens Maria\u2019s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father\u2019s fate\u2014and her own.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents <\/em>spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life\u2019s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post <\/em>calls \u201ca flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Marra <\/strong>is the New York Times <\/em>bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno <\/em>and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, <\/em>winner of the National Book Critics Circle\u2019s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mercury Pictures Presents\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
By Anthony Marra\u00a0
$28.99\u00a0
Publisher: Hogarth\/ Random House\u00a0
ISBN: 9780451495204\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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