Genre Fiction
![Anthony Marra - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_anthony_marra.jpg)
Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel
The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles-a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
"A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that's a true joy to read."-Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-BookPage
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood 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's arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: 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's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate-and her own.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's 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 calls "a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles."
"A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that's a true joy to read."-Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-BookPage
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood 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's arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: 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's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate-and her own.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's 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 calls "a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles."
Editorial Reviews
"[Anthony] Marra has ascended to the top of the literary ranks."-Booklist (starred review)
"Achingly beautiful . . . You laugh, then you sigh, then you weep. . . . Extraordinary."-Luis Urrea, bestselling author of The Devil's Highway and The Hummingbird's Daughter
"Anthony Marra is a writer of boundless talent: He is a top-notch historian, a razor-sharp social critic, a deeply sensitive psychologist, and an exuberant satirist-all at the same time. . . . A singularly pleasurable read-smart, sad, hilarious, and always full of heart."-Nathan Hill, bestselling author of The Nix
"Mercury Pictures Presents is a wonder-intimate and sweeping, heartfelt and satirical, one of the funniest and most moving novels I've read in a long time. A story of fascism, war, and refugees finding freedom through art and storytelling, it's both a joy to read and highly relevant to our times."-Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Angel of Rome
"Smart, heartfelt, and sneakily funny, Mercury Pictures Presents has all the breadth and power of an epic and the attention to detail of an intimate conversation. I read it in a state of admiration for the beauty Marra has wrung from the English language."-Sara Nović, author of Girl at War and True Biz
"A novel so rich and wondrous, written with such grace and wit, that there's only one word for Anthony Marra: genius."-Sally Mann, author of Hold Still, finalist for the National Book Award
"Marra brings his considerable gifts for scope and scene to early Hollywood, animating, as he does so thrillingly, the city, the players, the war, and the repercussions of small and huge actions on families, fates, countries, and film. And: this fully-realized ...
"Achingly beautiful . . . You laugh, then you sigh, then you weep. . . . Extraordinary."-Luis Urrea, bestselling author of The Devil's Highway and The Hummingbird's Daughter
"Anthony Marra is a writer of boundless talent: He is a top-notch historian, a razor-sharp social critic, a deeply sensitive psychologist, and an exuberant satirist-all at the same time. . . . A singularly pleasurable read-smart, sad, hilarious, and always full of heart."-Nathan Hill, bestselling author of The Nix
"Mercury Pictures Presents is a wonder-intimate and sweeping, heartfelt and satirical, one of the funniest and most moving novels I've read in a long time. A story of fascism, war, and refugees finding freedom through art and storytelling, it's both a joy to read and highly relevant to our times."-Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Angel of Rome
"Smart, heartfelt, and sneakily funny, Mercury Pictures Presents has all the breadth and power of an epic and the attention to detail of an intimate conversation. I read it in a state of admiration for the beauty Marra has wrung from the English language."-Sara Nović, author of Girl at War and True Biz
"A novel so rich and wondrous, written with such grace and wit, that there's only one word for Anthony Marra: genius."-Sally Mann, author of Hold Still, finalist for the National Book Award
"Marra brings his considerable gifts for scope and scene to early Hollywood, animating, as he does so thrillingly, the city, the players, the war, and the repercussions of small and huge actions on families, fates, countries, and film. And: this fully-realized ...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Sunny Siberia
1
When you entered the executive offices of Mercury Pictures International, you would first see a scale model of the studio itself. Artie Feldman, co-founder and head of production, installed it in the lobby to distract skittish investors from second thoughts. Complete with back lot, sound stages, and facilities buildings, the miniature was a faithful replica of the ten-acre studio in which it sat. Maria Lagana, as rendered by the miniaturist, was a tiny, featureless figure looking out Artie's office window. And this was where the real Maria stood late one morning in 1941, hands holstered on her hips, watching a pigeon autograph the windshield of her boss's new convertible. She'd like to buy that bird a drink.
"It's a beautiful day out, Art," Maria said. "You should really come have a look."
"I have," Artie said. "It made me want to jump."
Artie wasn't known for his joie de vivre, but he usually didn't fantasize about ending it all this close to lunch. Maria wondered if the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda was giving him agita, but no-the crisis at hand was on his head. His bald spot had finally grown too large for his toupee to conceal.
Six other black toupees were shellacked atop wooden mannequin heads on the shelf behind his desk, where a more successful producer might display his Oscars. They were conversation starters. As in, Artie began conversations with new employees by telling them the toupees were the scalps of their predecessors.
As far as Maria could tell, the six hairpieces were the same indistinguishable model and style, but Artie had become convinced that each one crackled with the karmic energy of the hair's original head, unrealized and awaiting release, like a static charge smuggled in a fingertip. Thus, he'd named his toupees after their personalities: The Heavyweight, The Casanova, The Optimist, The Edison, The Odysseus, and The Mephistopheles. Artie had never felt more at home in his adoptive country than when he learned the Founding Fathers had all worn toupees, even that showboat John Hancock. The only one who hadn't was Benjamin Franklin. And look how he turned out: a syphilitic Francophile who got his jollies flying kites in the rain.
"Maybe the toupee shrunk," he said, still hoping for a miracle.
"I think you'll need one with more coverage, Art."
"That's the second time this year. Christ, when will it end?"
"Life's nasty and brutish but at least it's short."
"Yeah? I'm not so optimistic."
Artie didn't believe in aging gracefully. He didn't believe in aging at all. At fifty-three, he maintained the same exercise regime that had made him a promising semi-professional boxer before a shattered wrist forced him into the only other business to reward his brand of controlled aggression. (He still kept a speedbag mounted to his office wall and liked to pummel it while in meetings with unaccommodating agents.) Sure, maybe he lost a step; maybe his knees sounded like a pair of maracas when he climbed stairs; maybe the boys in the mailroom let him win when he challenged them to arm-wrestling matches-but he wasn't getting old.
Or so Maria imagined Artie telling himself. In truth, she'd begun to worry about him. In four days, he would sit at a witness table on Capitol Hill, where he would testify alongside the heads of Warner Bros, MGM, Twentieth Century–Fox, and Paramount. It was shaping into a pivotal confrontation between campaigners for free speech and crusaders for government censorship. But as far as Maria could tell, Artie was more preoccupied with his toupee than his opening statement.
On the topic of censorship, he said, "Have you heard back from Joe Breen?"
"Earlier this morning."
"And? Will he approve the script for Devil's Bargain?"
Maria said nothing.
"I'm going to pull the rest of my hair out, aren't I?"
"I'm afraid so," she admitted.
Maria had started working at Mercury a decade earlier, rising from the typing pool to the front office. At the age of twenty-eight, she was an associate producer and Artie's deputy, a job that demanded the talents of a general, diplomat, hostage negotiator, and hairdresser. Among her duties was getting every Mercury picture blessed by the puritans and spoilsports who upheld the moral standards of movies at the Production Code Administration. The grand inquisitor over there was Joseph Breen, a bluenose so distraughtfully Catholic he'd once bowdlerized a Jesus biopic for sticking too close to the source material; apparently, a foreign-born Jew advocating redistribution smacked of Bolshevism to Breen. Committed to making pictures gratuitously inoffensive, Breen withheld Production ...
1
When you entered the executive offices of Mercury Pictures International, you would first see a scale model of the studio itself. Artie Feldman, co-founder and head of production, installed it in the lobby to distract skittish investors from second thoughts. Complete with back lot, sound stages, and facilities buildings, the miniature was a faithful replica of the ten-acre studio in which it sat. Maria Lagana, as rendered by the miniaturist, was a tiny, featureless figure looking out Artie's office window. And this was where the real Maria stood late one morning in 1941, hands holstered on her hips, watching a pigeon autograph the windshield of her boss's new convertible. She'd like to buy that bird a drink.
"It's a beautiful day out, Art," Maria said. "You should really come have a look."
"I have," Artie said. "It made me want to jump."
Artie wasn't known for his joie de vivre, but he usually didn't fantasize about ending it all this close to lunch. Maria wondered if the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda was giving him agita, but no-the crisis at hand was on his head. His bald spot had finally grown too large for his toupee to conceal.
Six other black toupees were shellacked atop wooden mannequin heads on the shelf behind his desk, where a more successful producer might display his Oscars. They were conversation starters. As in, Artie began conversations with new employees by telling them the toupees were the scalps of their predecessors.
As far as Maria could tell, the six hairpieces were the same indistinguishable model and style, but Artie had become convinced that each one crackled with the karmic energy of the hair's original head, unrealized and awaiting release, like a static charge smuggled in a fingertip. Thus, he'd named his toupees after their personalities: The Heavyweight, The Casanova, The Optimist, The Edison, The Odysseus, and The Mephistopheles. Artie had never felt more at home in his adoptive country than when he learned the Founding Fathers had all worn toupees, even that showboat John Hancock. The only one who hadn't was Benjamin Franklin. And look how he turned out: a syphilitic Francophile who got his jollies flying kites in the rain.
"Maybe the toupee shrunk," he said, still hoping for a miracle.
"I think you'll need one with more coverage, Art."
"That's the second time this year. Christ, when will it end?"
"Life's nasty and brutish but at least it's short."
"Yeah? I'm not so optimistic."
Artie didn't believe in aging gracefully. He didn't believe in aging at all. At fifty-three, he maintained the same exercise regime that had made him a promising semi-professional boxer before a shattered wrist forced him into the only other business to reward his brand of controlled aggression. (He still kept a speedbag mounted to his office wall and liked to pummel it while in meetings with unaccommodating agents.) Sure, maybe he lost a step; maybe his knees sounded like a pair of maracas when he climbed stairs; maybe the boys in the mailroom let him win when he challenged them to arm-wrestling matches-but he wasn't getting old.
Or so Maria imagined Artie telling himself. In truth, she'd begun to worry about him. In four days, he would sit at a witness table on Capitol Hill, where he would testify alongside the heads of Warner Bros, MGM, Twentieth Century–Fox, and Paramount. It was shaping into a pivotal confrontation between campaigners for free speech and crusaders for government censorship. But as far as Maria could tell, Artie was more preoccupied with his toupee than his opening statement.
On the topic of censorship, he said, "Have you heard back from Joe Breen?"
"Earlier this morning."
"And? Will he approve the script for Devil's Bargain?"
Maria said nothing.
"I'm going to pull the rest of my hair out, aren't I?"
"I'm afraid so," she admitted.
Maria had started working at Mercury a decade earlier, rising from the typing pool to the front office. At the age of twenty-eight, she was an associate producer and Artie's deputy, a job that demanded the talents of a general, diplomat, hostage negotiator, and hairdresser. Among her duties was getting every Mercury picture blessed by the puritans and spoilsports who upheld the moral standards of movies at the Production Code Administration. The grand inquisitor over there was Joseph Breen, a bluenose so distraughtfully Catholic he'd once bowdlerized a Jesus biopic for sticking too close to the source material; apparently, a foreign-born Jew advocating redistribution smacked of Bolshevism to Breen. Committed to making pictures gratuitously inoffensive, Breen withheld Production ...
