The queen of Tuesday : a novel

Title:

Author:

Strauss, Darin, author.

Personal Author:

Strauss, Darin, author.

ISBN:

9780812992762

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

318 pages ; 25 cm

Abstract:

"This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit--that the author's grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other. Lucille Ball--the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood--starred in America's first big-time interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. And she more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille's off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, in private she suffered. Her partner couldn't stay faithful. She struggled to manage her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol. The Queen of Tuesday--Strauss's follow-up to the NBCC-winning Half a Life--mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew"-- Provided by publisher.

Personal Subject:

Ball, Lucille, 1911-1989-Fiction.

Subject Term:

Celebrities -- Fiction.

Television actors and actresses -- Fiction.

Businesswomen -- Fiction.

Interracial marriage -- Fiction.

Adultery -- Fiction.

Genre:

Biographical fiction.

Historical fiction.

Romance fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

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Summary

"A gorgeous, Technicolor take on America in the middle of the twentieth century."--Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Chang & Eng and Half a Life , a new novel about Lucille Ball, a thrilling love story starring Hollywood's first true media mogul.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit--that the author's grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other.

Lucille Ball--the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood--was part of America's first high-profile interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. She more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille's off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, she suffered in private. Her partner couldn't stay faithful. She struggled to balance her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol.

The Queen of Tuesday --Strauss's follow-up to Half a Life , winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award--mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A fictionalized version of Lucille Ball's life, including a love affair with the author's grandfather. For decades, Strauss, the author of the award-winning memoir Half a Life (2010) as well as novels including Chang and Eng (2000), has been obsessed with the fact that his grandfather Isidore Strauss might have met Lucille Ball at a 1949 party thrown by Donald Trump's father to celebrate the destruction of the Pavilion of Fun on Coney Island. The complicated concoction of memoir and fiction that has emerged from this spark of inspiration interweaves imagined scenes from Ball's life on and off the set with imagined scenes from his grandfather's. Between these chapters, he slips in vignettes of what seems to be memoir, documenting his earlier attempts to bring attention to this passion project. The novel begins at Trump's party, written up in a highly stylized, flashy prose style: "Hey, that's your favorite celebrity over there. On the boardwalk, her white shoes scuffed black with sand. (If she's not famous now, just wait.) She's striding--confidenting--right into this party." Before the night's over, Desi Arnaz will have punched Isidore Strauss in the eye. What follows incorporates impressive research into the progress of Ball's career--the author hopes to "remind people that Lucille Ball starred in America's first big-time interracial love story; was the first powerful woman in Hollywood; that she owned more movie sets at one point than did any movie studio." However, in addition to grafting his made-up story onto the facts of Ball's life, he admits to monkeying with other details, which undercuts even the informational aims of the book. Mingling fictional characters with famous historical ones worked to brilliant effect in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and many similar novels since, but this feels more like a thought experiment than a compelling story. The jaunty narrator is not just omniscient, but presumptuous and intrusive, spending a good deal of time in the characters' heads, confidently reporting their thoughts. In a scene in which Ball is having sexual intercourse with the author's grandfather, Strauss has her meditate on why she likes him so much. "Really, it was the fucking. It's hard not to love something you're really good at. She was really good at that." Oof. This odd book stands to anger Lucille Ball's fans and bemuse Darin Strauss'. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.