It’s 1953, Louise Leithauser is working to become a serious journalist and author. She has a job at her boyfriend Joe’s literary magazine, Downtown, where she’s been given the opportunity to shine. Her first article had to be published under a make pseudonym, but she thinks it’s worth it when she gets the opportunity to interview Ernest Hemingway. In addition, the novel she’s writing about a housewife to defects to the Soviet Union to become an astronaut is going well.
However, life is never perfect. When she overhears Joe and his partner talking about listening devices and death threats, she has to find out what is going on. Her foray in to murky world that may include espionage, the CIA, and censorship of writers changes her and the novel she’s writing.
I thought the author did an excellent job bringing the post WWII world to life. Louise’s problems in the workforce were experienced by many women looking for careers. Now that the war was over, women were supposed to go back to being wives and mothers no matter what their ambitions were.
The involvement of the CIA in trying to censor artists and writers is true to life and provides a realistic background for the story. I enjoyed all the vignettes of famous writers that appeared in the novel. What I didn’t enjoy was having to move from the story of Louise’s life to the novel she was writing. I found it intrusive and frankly, the novel wasn’t as interesting as what was happening to Louise.
I received this book from Doubleday for this review.
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