“Girls, Girls, Girls: The
Buzziest Word in Book Titles”
screams
the headline in a July 17 Departure
article by Elizabeth Siles. Its subhead:
“The one word publishers can’t get enough of.” And this June
piece in USA
Today:
“Book
publishing goes wild for 'Girls'.” Even The
New York Times
declares its hip, albeit with more restraint, in this May head:
“This Summer, Girls in Titles and Girls in Peril.” Stieg Larsson
launched the burgeoning modern craze eight years back with The
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Four
years later
came Gillian Flynn’s Gone
Girl, followed
in 2015 by Paula Hawkins’s The
Girl on the Train. The
five biggest U.S. publishers came out with 20 girl books that same
year, and the figure has jumped to 30
this.
Margaret
Gunning’s The
Glass Character
hit the bookstores two years ago. It’s barely been reviewed. Not
even kicked around by the NYT’s literary executioner Michiko
Kakutani. Had girl
been in the title I can’t imagine anything stopping it from
arriving on Maureen Corrigan’s desk and thence aired on NPR.
 |
| Gunning and Lloyd |
I
trust it’s not too late for the disclaimer:
The
Glass Character
is the only book ever in which I am honored with a dedication.
Margaret Gunning, a Canadian author, and I, a Virginia scribbler,
have been Internet friends for over a decade. I read an early draft
of her novel and offered encouragement during the long arduous months
she spent hawking the manuscript to publishers. We rejoiced when
Thistledown Press, a boutique house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
bought the book we’d hoped would be Margaret’s break-out novel.
It was her third. The first two—Mallory
and Better
Than Life—both
published by
small
Canadian houses, had received excellent reviews but no widespread
marketing. The
Glass Character
was a more ambitious project, built around the all-but-forgotten
silent movie comedian Harold Lloyd. The title refers to his fake
signature glasses, which he wore to set himself apart. So why title
such a novel as if it’s about a girl? Because it is. You don’t
think I’d try to sell you a sizzle without the steak! Here’s the
review I wrote after receiving my special copy of The
Glass Character:
In case the name doesn't ring
a bell, he's the guy with the straw hat and Woody Allen glasses, in
the suit, dangling from a clock on the side of a building so far
above a busy avenue the cars below look like ladybugs on wheels.
Harold Lloyd.
Movie comedian of the silent
1920s. Called himself the "Glass Character" because his
trademark glasses were fake. No glass in them. The guy was a nut.
Blew one of his hands to Kingdom Come fiddling with what he thought
was a stage prop bomb. It was real. Deliberately gave himself
powerful electric shocks to get his hair to stand straight up. Did
his own stunts--the clock dangle, the shocked hair, pretending to
trip and stagger on building ledges up in the sky, netless--a brave,
some would say foolhardy, genius. Nut.
Knowing this and being
acrophobic, I can't watch his movies anymore. It even scares me to
look at the photos. I'll let Margaret Gunning watch the movies and
look at the photos, and I'll read her reports.
Well, then again, I don't have to anymore. I've read The
Glass Character.
It's all in there.
Margaret, poor girl, is in
love with Harold Lloyd. It started out as just a fascination with
soundless images. Love snuck up and struck her dumb somewhere amid
the exhaustive research she was conducting for a book about what was
then still just a fascination. Love. Alas. A happily married
grandmother, Margaret is still far too young to leap the gap into the
day when her beloved Harold held sway with the girls of a baby
Hollywood. Fortunately, for her and for us, she's a novelist. She has
the skill to weave the magic carpet to carry her backward in time to
those days of yore, those Harold heyday days, and set her gently down
along the path the love of her dreams must follow for there to be a
rebirth in the imaginations and hearts of Harold Lloyd admirers evermore. She's
woven that carpet. It's large enough to take us with her on that long
strange trip. I rode along on a test flight. We made it back, and I'm
still agog.
When we stepped off the carpet
in la la land I saw that Margaret had changed. No longer the familiar
author of two of my favorite novels--Better
than Life and
Mallory--she'd
become sixteen-year-old Jane Chorney, a virgin and erstwhile soda
jerk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a terrible crush on movie idol
Harold Lloyd. Soon after we landed, Margaret /Jane (and later
"Muriel", as you will learn) decided to pack up her meager
belongings, cash in her chips (two cents shy of fifty bucks) and head
to Hollywood and into the arms of her eternal love. I might have
tried to instill sense in her were I anything more than invisible
eyes and ears. Unfortunately I had lost my voice and corporeal
substance upon alighting in the Santa Fe dust.
So it was off to Hollywood via
a wearying, bumpy bus ride, Margaret/Jane/Muriel full of glitzy
dreams and innocence, and me hunkered weightless, mute and unseen on
her delicate shoulder.
I won't say more. I took no
notes and had to avert my gaze any number of times during moments
that really were none of my personal concern. The
Glass Character is
Margaret/Jane/Muriel's story, not mine. What I did see and hear, and
learn during our holiday in history is captured with such lucid,
insightful poignancy I can't help but wonder if Margaret didn't in
fact remain there, dictating her journal to a holographic image of
herself in the distant future tapping on a keyboard somewhere in a
place called Coquitlam, B.C.
So.
Disingenuous
to drop the The
and the Character
and add Girl without
changing the novel even a wee bit? I don’t see why. Might Glass
Girl
sell a few more books and still have a chance to get read on NPR and
maybe kicked around or, should hell cool
down a notch,
actually
praised
by Kakutani? Maybe get a movie deal? I don’t see why not. Wouldn’t
hurt to try, I
reckon.
[for
more Friday's Forgotten Books check the links on Patti
Abbott's unforgettable blog]
