My Hollywood

"Simpson's massive giftsùfor unflinching precision, for artful indirection, and for the deft unfurling of imageryùare on vivid display in My Hollywood, a book that carries us down deep, into the darkness of two distinct worlds, and lights them up, finding all the comedy in the ways they are the same world, and all the tragedy in the unbridgeable distance between them."-Michael Chabon"A darkly beautiful atlas of the American promised land, and a definitive novel of modern domesticity. Brilliant, in short."ùJoseph O'Neill"This big gorgeous book is at once an entertaining, socially astute upstairs-downstairs drama and a profound meditation on the shifting and often competing demands of love and work in a woman's life. One more time, Mona Simpson has burrowed deep into the American family to extract the shivering truth about the many trade-offs women face in raising children today. Lola, the Filipina nanny at the heart of the book, is surely one of the great literary creations of our time. My Hollywood is vast inscope, exquisite in detail, rife with pleasures."-Michelle HunevenA wonderfully provocative and appealing novel, from the much-loved author of Anywhere But Here and A Regular Guy, her first in ten years. It tells the story of two women whose lives entwine and unfold behind the glittery surface of Hollywood.Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to LA so her husband can follow his passion for writing television comedy. Suddenly the marriageùonce a genuine 50/50 arrangementùchanges, with Paul working long hours and Claire left at home with a baby, William, whom she adores but has no idea how to care for.Lola, a fifty-two-year-old mother of five who is working in America to pay for her own children's higher education back in the Philippines, becomes their nanny. Lola stabilizes the rocky household and soon other parents try to lure her away. What she sacrifices to stay with Claire and "Williamo" remains her own closely guarded secret.In a novel at turns satirical and heartbreaking, where mothers' modern ideas are given practical overhauls by nannies, we meet Lola's vast network of fellow caregivers, each with her own story to tell. We see the upstairs competition for the best nanny and the downstairs competition for the best deal, and are forced to ask whether it is possible to buy love for our children and what that transaction costs us all.We look into two contemporary marriagesùone in America and one in the Philippinesùand witness their endangerment, despite the best of intentions.My Hollywood is a tender, witty, and resonant novel that provides the profound pleasures readers have come to expect from Mona Simpson, here writing at the height of her powers.

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