The flawed narrative is in this case a relationship, and Hummel’s larger question is how — or whether — it can survive the expectations faced by women, both then and now ... A novel about agency and friendship whose questions reverberate far beyond its two protagonists and their particular time and place. Haunting and tragic, it nevertheless lands on a hopeful note.
Edith and Lacey’s history emerges in flashbacks ... Unfortunately, Edith and Lacey gain little complexity as the story progresses. As if to make up for her characters’ flatness, Hummel amply describes some scenic details ... But the hotel room is less vivid, and that’s where we stay, with two semi-stock characters who soliloquize at each other ... If only Hummel had followed the producers’ advice and added more layers to this script.
In this taut, tense, and layered novel, Hummel deftly examines the lives of two flawed women against the backdrop of the upheavals of the twentieth century.
Powerful ... Hummel skillfully evokes the Cranes’ gilded world of hotels and Hollywood, and deeply explores the women’s fraught friendship from both points of view. Readers will be rapt.
