Book Review: Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures

Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Release Date: September 4, 2012
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In 1920, Elsa Emerson, the youngest and blondest of three sisters, is born in idyllic Door County, Wisconsin. Her family owns the Cherry County Playhouse, and more than anything, Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child¹s game of pretend.

While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Irving Green, one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood, who refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette and renames her Laura Lamont. Irving becomes Laura’s great love; she becomes an Academy Award­-winning actress—and a genuine movie star. Laura experiences all the glamour and extravagance of the heady pinnacle of stardom in the studio-system era, but ultimately her story is a timeless one of a woman trying to balance career, family, and personal happiness, all while remaining true to herself.

I love films, Hollywood, movie stars, glamour and this book had all of that. Laura Lamont is a fictional character but she reminded me of several old Hollywood movie stars. From what I’ve read in interviews with Emma Straub, she did quite a bit of research about the Hollywood of yesteryear and the way the studios used to control all of the movie stars. I loved getting an inside peek at how it worked behind the scenes.

This book is more than that though. It follows Laura through most of her life, which goes through several ups and downs, some them expected and some of them quite unexpected. Her evolution from Elsa to Laura is not a straightforward transformation. Straub has made Laura more complicated than that, which I appreciated. Her writing is beautifully descriptive and was a joy to read.

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(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)