Synopses & Reviews
Glen David Gold, author of the best seller
Carter Beats the Devil, now gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate, heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.
Sunnyside opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the worlds last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in Americas doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complicationsstudio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother.
The narrative is as rich and expansive as the ground it covers, and it is cast with a dazzling roster of both real and fictional characters: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Adolph Zukor, Chaplins (first) child bride, a thieving Girl Scout, the secretary of the treasury, a lovesick film theorist, three Russian princesses (gracious, nervous, and nihilist), a crew of fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants moviemakers, legions of starstruck fans, and Rin Tin Tin.
By turns lighthearted and profound, Sunnyside is an altogether spellbinding novel about dreams, ambition, and the dawn of the modern age.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
A quintessentially American epic, Sunnyside stars the one and only Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin. It’s 1916 and, after an extraordinary mass delusion where Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, his fame is at its peak but his inspiration is at a low. As he struggles to find a film project as worthy as himself, we are introduced to a dazzling cast of characters that take us from the battlefields of France to the Russian Revolution and from the budding glamour of Hollywood to madcap Wild West shows. The result is a spellbinding novel about dreams, ambition, and the birth of modern America.
Synopsis
From the author of "Carter Beats the Devil "comes a spellbinding novel about the overlapping fortunes of three men, one of whom is Charlie Chaplin, bound together by an extraordinary illusion.
About the Author
Glen David Golds first novel,
Carter Beats the Devil, has been translated into fourteen languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in
McSweeneys, Playboy, and
The New York Times Magazine. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Alice Sebold.
From the Hardcover edition.