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Ladataan... Valley of the Dolls 50th Anniversary Edition (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1966; vuoden 2016 painos)Tekijä: Jacqueline Susann (Tekijä)
TeostiedotNukkelaakso (tekijä: Jacqueline Susann) (1966)
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» 12 lisää Rory Gilmore Book Club (116) Best Feminist Literature (176) Page Turners (85) Read These Too (105) sad girl books (28) discontinued (24) sad girl books (20) Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. This was so good and yet so bad. I don't know how else to say it. This was very entertaining and said a lot about the entertainment industry during the 20th century. The prose is readable, but also nothing to write home about. There was so much in this novel, you can tell Susann put so much into the characters and the plot. Every man in this book was horrible, Lyon being the worst! The only likable characters were Anne and Sharon Tate... I mean Jennifer! These are real people and real situations, no one can tell me otherwise, and it is terrifying! Someone, please tell me this isn't what real life is, what humanity is. Please tell me that we've progressed as a society since this was written. fabulously depressing, valley of the dolls is the perfect showbusiness corruption story. it highlights the decadence and alienation of the entertainment industry, whilst also commenting on the social restrictions placed on women in this era - all in a very camp manner (probably not intended, but a highlight nonetheless). i loved jennifer and anne (and had a love-hate relationship with neely), and found their stories fascinating. an intimately camp portrait of a descent into, well, the valley of the dolls.
Valley of the Dolls is a zipper-ripper that has been called trashy, tawdry, glitzy, lusty, sordid and seamy — and that's just the beginning of its appeal. Valley Of The Dolls can be enjoyed as the ultimate plush, trash, human-interest story - three decades of gossip columns distilled into one fat novel - but also as a document of some cultural interest, published as it was in 1966, but spanning the years from optimistic postwar 1945 to world-weary pre-deluge 1963. Kierkegaard's theorem that life can only be lived forwards and understood backwards has been used as an excuse to dignify a lot of silly, frivolous cultural frills and furbelows with far greater significance than they actually had - including the mini-skirt, Barbie dolls and atheism. But the sheer breadth and depth of this particular disco-ball gives it lasting clout.
Dolls: red or black; capsules or tablets; washed down with vodka or swallowed straight -- for Anne, Neely, and Jennifer, it doesn't matter, as long as the pill bottle is within easy reach. These three women become best friends when they are young and struggling in New York City and then climb to the top of the entertainment industry -- only to find that there is no place left to go but down -- into the Valley of the Dolls. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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The women's stories all take different directions from there: Anne breaks off a relationship with a rich man who wants to marry her to pursue a relationship with Lyon, her boss's protegee, a veteran who's returned from war but thinks he maybe wants to be a writer instead of getting back into the rat race. She's crazy about him, but he's proud and doesn't want to marry her unless he can support her even though she's well-off enough for both of them. When they break up, she goes on to date an older cosmetics executive and becomes a TV spokesmodel. Neely goes to Hollywood to make it in the movies, where she's put on uppers so she can handle long song-and-dance rehearsals while skipping meals to lose weight, and gets herself onto downers so she can sleep. She becomes a huge star and wins an Oscar, but also turns into an addict. And Jennifer, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, chases a marriage with a successful lounge singer to lock in a source of support for her and her family...only to discover her beloved isn't who she thinks he is and winds up making "art films" overseas. She finally finds real love and security with a politican, but she also finds a lump in her breast.
On the one hand, this is delightfully campy melodrama: Anne's terror of being "frigid" and desperate desire for Lyon, Lyon's refusal to be a "kept man", Neely's marriages and pill popping and downward spiral into addiction, Jennifer's secret white trash past and doomed marriage and soft-core porn career. Y'all, there is an actual scene in which a wig is snatched and flushed down the toilet. I found myself actually giggling out loud while reading it. But there's also a very real story there about how the entertainment industry chews women up and spits them out. Two of the three major characters are clearly based on real people: Neely's story has too many similarities to Judy Garland's to be mere coincidence, and Jennifer's is less clear but still obviously reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. All three women are scared of aging, terrified of losing their looks and therefore their value.
While Anne is the main character (the book begins and ends with "her" sections), perspective switches to Neely and Jennifer often enough to keep things interesting. The characters aren't necessarily super deep, but they are each flawed in their own way and so are at least well-rounded and generally sympathetic (although Neely takes a turn towards villainy near the end). There's definitely plenty of fluff, like I talked about above, but there's enough reality and pathos to balance it out so it doesn't feel like the book equivalent of a Twinkie. It's an entertaining, enjoyable read, and I'd recommend it...particularly to those interested in the entertainment industry and classic Broadway/Hollywood. (