My Hollywood

“Simpson works her habitual magic, showing how love travels, ownerless and unbidden, among children who need adults, and adults who need children. ‘Children, they are dependent for their life,’ Lola observed, back in Santa Monica. But so are adults. Sitting with her friends, drinking ‘nonfat lattes, ice blendeds, a dozen small consolations,’ Claire asks, ‘For what, exactly, were mothers always being consoled?’ Simpson gently suggests an answer: for their fear of failing in their responsibilities, to their children and themselves, the extent of which they'll only know when their children grow up and tell them what they were.”  —Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review

 

“Simpson’s novel shows the intricacies and inequities of domestic politics . . . My Hollywood is a smart, topical, absorbing novel that explores the macro economy, the micro economy and the world of work, both inside and outside the home. Mona Simpson writes adroitly about domestic matters, and she knows the domestic matters.” —Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Kansas City Star

 

“It is Lola . . . who holds center stage, emerging as an indelible character — as keenly observed as the mother-and-daughter pair in Anywhere but Here, and as much an avatar, as they were, of the contingencies and compromises of the American Dream.”  —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

 

“It takes a very subtle, sophisticated and confident writer to make our most common problems come off as unique on the page as they feel at 3 in the morning. If anyone can do it, Mona Simpson, author of Anywhere but Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy and Off Keck Road, can. And does. But there's more.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times

“Simpson is a virtuoso at allowing her characters to convey their internal landscapes in first-person voices suffused with personality, insight, and wit . . . the real richness of My Hollywood lies in Simpson’s gift for conveying enormous meaning in moments depicted so prosaically that they don’t reveal their significance at first glance . . . Simpson has given us an expansive and original look at the types of costs incurred in caring for a child, the complexities of commodifying such care, and what it can mean to belong to a family in our contemporary world.  . . . Simpson’s novel deftly explores that something in all its pain and comfort. —Jessica Treadway, The Boston Globe

“My Hollywood excels in the richness of its characterization of Lola, a woman no longer sure where or to whom she belongs: in her native country, where she employed servants, or in the U.S., where she is a servant? The holy words of America, Lola says, are There is—Is there milk? ‘There is.’ She is wise enough to understand her contribution to that abundance (Is there help? There is). But lucky for Williamo, that hasn't made her cynical. Lola loves what she does. It doesn't seem a stretch to imagine her as representative of good nannies everywhere in the US, anxious to work despite a skill set you'd call limited. That is, until you saw her with your child.” —Mary Pols,