Thursday, November 03, 2005
Cheat and Charmer by Elizabeth Frank
Cheat and Charmer by Elizabeth Frank looked like it would be a good book, but I just felt cheated.
Cheat and Charmer is the story of two sisters one beautiful and famous (Veevie), the other plain and somewhat talented (Dinah) can you say cliché? The sisters grew up in LA and both ended up in show biz and the Communist Party. It takes place in Hollywood during the Red Scare and the McCarthy witch hunts of the early 1950’s. Cheat and Charmer tends to hit you over the head on the topic of principles without ever really getting to the meat of the issue. It poses many surface questions about the principles of those in the Party both during their early years and later when many left the Party behind and then those who chose to testify and those who did not. I kept waiting for something interesting and political to happen and instead all it really is, is a “book of betrayal” (to quote my friend Jessica). The characters neither know how to be honest, what it takes to have meaningful relationships, nor how to create the lives they want as sisters, wives, husbands, mothers, friends, they are all immature and morally bankrupt people. The only redeeming characters are the housekeeper and the mother-in-law (Dorska)
Large portions of the history of Dinah and her sister Veevie are told through flash backs which are supposed to show the circumstances through which the women became involved with the communist party in Hollywood. The sad thing is that it becomes clear that the women were only ever viewed as party favors by the men in the novel, never a contributing partner in anything. I agree with my friend Jessica’s assessment that the author relied on stereotypes to build the characters rather than ever getting into who they really could have been in that environment. The women come out looking like sexual pawns to the men, and maybe they were, but I imagine there was more a more interesting character angels that she could have pursued.
I was really hoping to learn something more about the history and politics of time as well as what it meant to have to choose between testifying and “naming names” or keeping silent and therefore going to jail and loosing the life to which they were accustomed. Instead it really has flat characters and became a meditation of personal betrayal and loosing the illusion of the life the characters thought they had.
Cheat and Charmer is the story of two sisters one beautiful and famous (Veevie), the other plain and somewhat talented (Dinah) can you say cliché? The sisters grew up in LA and both ended up in show biz and the Communist Party. It takes place in Hollywood during the Red Scare and the McCarthy witch hunts of the early 1950’s. Cheat and Charmer tends to hit you over the head on the topic of principles without ever really getting to the meat of the issue. It poses many surface questions about the principles of those in the Party both during their early years and later when many left the Party behind and then those who chose to testify and those who did not. I kept waiting for something interesting and political to happen and instead all it really is, is a “book of betrayal” (to quote my friend Jessica). The characters neither know how to be honest, what it takes to have meaningful relationships, nor how to create the lives they want as sisters, wives, husbands, mothers, friends, they are all immature and morally bankrupt people. The only redeeming characters are the housekeeper and the mother-in-law (Dorska)
Large portions of the history of Dinah and her sister Veevie are told through flash backs which are supposed to show the circumstances through which the women became involved with the communist party in Hollywood. The sad thing is that it becomes clear that the women were only ever viewed as party favors by the men in the novel, never a contributing partner in anything. I agree with my friend Jessica’s assessment that the author relied on stereotypes to build the characters rather than ever getting into who they really could have been in that environment. The women come out looking like sexual pawns to the men, and maybe they were, but I imagine there was more a more interesting character angels that she could have pursued.
I was really hoping to learn something more about the history and politics of time as well as what it meant to have to choose between testifying and “naming names” or keeping silent and therefore going to jail and loosing the life to which they were accustomed. Instead it really has flat characters and became a meditation of personal betrayal and loosing the illusion of the life the characters thought they had.
# posted by lyskie @ 2:26 PM 
