Mercury Pictures Presents

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I was misquoted. I never called him ‘great.’” Artie tossed the script on his desk and peeled off his hairpiece. His liver-spotted scalp resembled a slab of pimento loaf. Maria always found the sight of it oddly moving, a sign of the trust established over the ten years they had worked together. Artie allowed no one else at Mercury to see him in between toupees. He turned to her and said, “What do you think—any chance we can salvage this?” She was Rubenesque, and, like both painter and deli sandwich, irrefutable proof of Creation’s genius. So, what of that antic voice that seems so non-Marra? Particularly early on, the narration is rife with extended, sardonic descriptions, no more so that when we’re spending time with Maria’s great aunts, who serve as a kind of comic chorus. Characters banter in sharpened one-liners, which is perhaps fitting in the Hollywood studio, but it’s there among the Old-World Italians, too. At times, it feels like we’ve stumbled into an Aaron Sorkin script. Marra’s characters are wonderfully drawn. I felt for them. They come from around the world and end up in Los Angeles, but more specifically Hollywood. Some become new people before they arrive, others after they meet new employers and realize what is wanted or needed. Even now, a few days after I finished reading, I can see some of these people in my mind’s eye: one at her desk or with Artie, another always with his camera, still another working on the miniatures, and last, a man I came to really like talking with Bela Lugosi about life in Hollywood.

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Whomever. The point is, that Sistine Chapel is something, isn’t it? You want to know what I think?” She didn’t, but Artie’s opinions moved with the tottery insistence of a drunk barging past the maître d’. “I think this Michael Angelo character must’ve been the Preston Sturges of his time.” I loved the first half of the book and thought it worthy of 5 stars. My enthusiasm waned as the book got lengthier and more involved. The book ended on a stronger note with its epilogue. The epilogue provided a satisfying closure to the novel; I enjoyed how it tied up loose threads about the more major characters and explained where they were in their lives. And Maria had evolved by then to have more warmth and charm. 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 Just to ease the dramatic tension, though, I’ll state up front that, in the end, Marra melted my heart, and I view Mercury as a worthy addition to the author’s canon. Intimate and sweeping, heartfelt and satirical, one of the funniest and most moving novels I’ve read in a long time.” —Jess WalterMercury Pictures Presents showcases imperfect people in an imperfect world groping to connect, all from an author who continues to pen perfection. The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles

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I’m surprised he didn’t censor the spaces between the words,” Artie said, flipping through the blue-penciled script. Maria’s marginalia were heavily seasoned with profanity and exclamation points. “Breen’s always had it in for me. I’ve never understood it.”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 Mercury Pictures Presents is a work of historical fiction set in the Italy of rising fascism between the wars. Then the action shifts to California in the late 1930s, more specifically Hollywood and the titular studio which is to become home to many in the flight from Hitler and Mussolini. While we are inside the sometimes manic everyday studio operations led by Artie Feldman, we are even closer to Maria Lagana who has traveled from a village in Italy to Hollywood with hopes, sorrows, delayed dreams, and lots of intelligence. For years, Maria had devised strategies for smuggling the profane beneath the most sensitive censorial snouts. At her best, she passed more colorful bullshit than Babe the Blue Ox. What does Annunziata's suitcase represent to her when she fills it with Italian soil and brings it to America? How does this change when she passes it on to Maria? When Maria passes it to Eddie?