The Age of Dreaming
"Rare indeed is a novel this deeply pleasurable and significant." --Booklist, Starred Review
"[Nina Revoyr is] an empathetic chronicler of the dispossessed outsider in LA." --Los Angeles Times
Jun Nakayama was a silent film star in the early days of Hollywood, but by 1964, he finds himself living in complete obscurity--until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, tracks him down for an interview. When Bellinger reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind, Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to the big screen. But he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past, and uncover the events that led to the abrupt end of his career in 1922. These events include the changing social and racial tides in California--and the unsolved murder of his favorite director, Ashley Bennett Tyler.
The Age of Dreaming explores the history of Los Angeles, the heady beginnings of the movie industry, and the interplay of race and celebrity. It is part historical novel, part murder mystery, and part unrequited love story--all told through the voice of a forgotten star who must gradually come to terms with his past.
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Fast-moving, riveting, unpredictable, and profound; highly recommended.-- "Library Journal"
Revoyr conveys in a lucid, precise and period appropriate prose . . . a pulse-quickening, deliciously ironic serving of Hollywood noir.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
It's an enormously satisfying novel.-- "Publishers Weekly"
With Nabokov-worthy sentences, characters so real our hearts begin to beat with theirs, and a story as deeply mysterious and riveting as any the Hollywood it conjures up could have created, The Age of Dreaming is a masterpiece of the sort that doesn't just seduce the reader--it leaves you transformed. Possessed of stunning vision and an elegance all her own, Nina Revoyr deserves to be counted among the top ranks of novelists at work today. Film lovers--and lovers of literature--will willingly lose themselves in this haunting, heartfelt epic of race, genius, passion, memory, and a Hollywood few have ever seen before.--Jerry Stahl, author of I, Fatty and Permanent Midnight
