The Hollywood Daughter: A Novel

by Kate Alcott Narrated by Erin Spencer

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmaker and A Touch of Stardust, comes a Hollywood coming-of-age novel, in which Ingrid Bergman's affair with Roberto Rossellini forces her biggest fan to reconsider everything she was raised to believe

In 1950, Ingrid Bergman-already a major star after movies like Casablanca and Joan of Arc-has a baby out of wedlock with her Italian lover, film director Roberto Rossellini. Previously held up as an icon of purity, Bergman's fall shocked her legions of American fans.
****Growing up in Hollywood, Jessica Malloy watches as her PR executive father helps make Ingrid a star at Selznick Studio. Over years of fleeting interactions with the actress, Jesse comes to idolize Ingrid, who she considered not only the epitome of elegance and integrity, but also the picture-perfect mother, an area where her own difficult mom falls short.
****In a heated era of McCarthyism and extreme censorship, Ingrid's affair sets off an international scandal that robs seventeen-year-old Jesse of her childhood hero. When the stress placed on Jesse's father begins to reveal hidden truths about the Malloy family, Jesse's eyes are opened to the complex realities of life-and love.
**** Beautifully written and deeply moving, The Hollywood Daughter is an intimate novel of self-discovery that evokes a Hollywood sparkling with glamour and vivid drama.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/06/2017
Alcott, who has written before about Old Hollywood (A Touch of Stardust), returns with this affecting coming-of-age novel. Jessica Malloy is the daughter of a devoutly Catholic mother and a father who works as a PR executive with Selznick Pictures. His job involves selling Ingrid Bergman to the American public, which puts his career on the fast track until she has an affair and a child out of wedlock. Jessica idolizes Bergman, adores her father, but cannot connect with her cold and often-fragile mother. Alcott effectively uses Bergman’s 1950 fall from grace, seen through Jessica’s eyes, to illustrate the Catholic Church’s influence on the era’s culture, McCarthyism, and the constraints of women’s roles. This narrative alternates with 1959, in which Jessica, now a standoffish New York copywriter pigeonholed by her gender, she receives a mysterious invitation to attend the Academy Awards ceremony. The author draws in readers from the start with smooth writing. Her storytelling skillfully taps into Jessica’s black-and-white adolescent worldview and the distance she maintains from others as an adult, making both real—and surprisingly emotional. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

"A vivid portrait of the turbulent times and the heartbreak of real people underneath all the glamour of 1940s Hollywood.  Young Jesse Malloy is a compelling guide to the era and her connection to the beautiful Ingrid Bergman forms an integral part of Jesse's search for the truth about her own childhood.  Brimming with all the sparkle of old Hollywood and all the heart and honesty of a true coming-of-age story."
—Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Before the War

"The Hollywood Daughter comes at a perfect time to remind us of what happens when conspiracy theorists and authoritarians are loosed upon the land...Jessica Malloy is a worthy heroine for our era. Kate Alcott reminds us that the real damage to home and homeland comes from fearmongering and divisive politics."
—Washington Post

“The Ingrid Bergman that Alcott creates is more human and flawed than the celebrity we know from the movies…The Hollywood Daughter is at first loaded with nostalgia…But the novel slowly unravels this idealistic image to show the danger of conformity and the overwhelming pressure to do what is expected in a culture where aberration is not tolerated…[The novel] feels particularly resonant today.”
—Kansas City Star

"Kate Alcott crafts an engrossing coming of age tale that cleverly portrays both the seductive glamour and moral hypocrisy of 1940's Hollywood. Told through the eyes of an idealistic young heroine whose own loyalties are divided, the story of Ingrid Bergman's very public rise and fall from grace deftly mirrors the changing female identity of a nation and offers timely reminders on the dangers of censorship, intolerance, and institutionalized sexism."
—Kathleen Tessaro, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfume Collector 

"I was swept along by this story; Kate Alcott has crafted a masterpiece with this novel, writing with grace and lyricism about the golden age of Hollywood and a young girl living on the periphery of a glittering world. Alcott manages to keep Ingrid Bergman just ethereal enough to maintain the allure the starlet was known for, while bringing Bergman's human longings to the surface. It is a breathtakingly tender exploration of faith, fame, growing up and letting go."
—Victoria Kelly, author of Mrs. Houdini

"Alcott tells another tremendously appealing story with great skill and insight, extending her reign as a top popular historical novelist.”
—Booklist

“[An] affecting coming of age novel...Alcott effectively uses Bergman’s 1950 fall from grace, seen through Jessica’s eyes... drawing in readers from the start with smooth writing. Her storytelling skillfully taps into Jessica’s black-and-white adolescent worldview and the distance she maintains from others as an adult, making both real—and surprisingly emotional.”
 —Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

01/01/2017
Alcott (A Touch of Stardust; The Dressmaker), who is actually journalist Patricia O'Brien, uses her research skills to great advantage in this 1950s coming-of-age story, told from the point of view of Jesse Malloy, a young girl growing up in Hollywood. Her father is a studio PR executive trying to keep Ingrid Bergman's illicit romance with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini from damaging her box-office appeal; her mother is a devoted Catholic with secrets of her own. It's the era of McCarthyism and strict censorship promoted by the Catholic Church, and the resulting paranoia has a destructive impact on not only the studio system and its stars but also on Jesse and her parents' troubled marriage. Alcott is clearly a devoted movie fan, and her ending is something out of a classic film. Her technique of setting her characters against the backdrop of real events is largely successful owing to an engrossing plot and sympathetic protagonists. VERDICT Movie fans and readers of historical fiction will appreciate this loving tribute to Old Hollywood and its stars. [See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]—Elizabeth Safford, Boxford Town Lib., MA

Kirkus Reviews

2016-12-19
A Hollywood publicist's daughter idolizes movie star Ingrid Bergman.It's 1959, and Jesse Malloy, a confirmed New Yorker, is assailing the still-impenetrable glass ceiling at Newsweek when she receives an unexpected invitation—to attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. She left her California girlhood behind in 1950 to attend Bennington College, and the invitation spurs memories and an extended flashback to a time when the destiny of her small family became intertwined with that of the luminous Bergman. In spottily period-appropriate language, a sun-dappled period in Jesse's life is revisited. Jesse's father, Gabriel, is a studio publicist whose career has skyrocketed, along with Bergman's, thanks to his shrewd positioning of the movie Casablanca. The family buys a Beverly Hills mansion with a pool. Jesse's mother, Vanessa, a devout Roman Catholic, enrolls Jesse at Saint Ann's, an all-girls Catholic school, where her sojourn is remarkably trauma-free. The true milestones of Jesse's adolescence are her brief encounters with Bergman. Her admiration for the star morphs into affinity when Saint Ann's, through the good offices of Gabriel, is selected as the location for The Bells of St. Mary's. Thanks to this film and her later star-vehicle Joan of Arc, Bergman becomes the darling of the Catholic Church and its censorious minions the Legion of Decency, whose movie ratings terrorize Hollywood. When Bergman leaves her stifling marriage for a liaison with director Roberto Rossellini that results in an out-of-wedlock child, all bets are off. Alcott capably depicts the undercurrents of a family challenged by high stakes and hairpin career turns in the redbaiting blacklist era, but the book is riddled with superfluous come-to-realization moments, such as "I was having my first glimmer of the fact that absolutes are tricky in the real world." The characters are appealing anyway, and their earnestness and good will, in the face of all that trickiness, are poignant. A troubled era in America's past brought to life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171993009
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Hollywood Daughter"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Kate Alcott.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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