Marra unspools this period comedy with so much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke. Remember I’m under oath when I say Devil’s Bargain is the best motion picture of the year—that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This was a fresh angle (I didn’t know about the confino before), and Marra has a large and colourful cast of characters intersect in complex ways, but the story didn’t surprise or move me. So much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke.

MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS | Kirkus Reviews MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS | Kirkus Reviews

As with his earlier books, there is a large interlocking cast, but what he does so well is give life to even the participants occupying the smallest page count, like the bit players he is honoring.Artie looked at Maria and across that long stare the musculature conjoining their intuitions flexed. With Mercury Pictures Presents [Marra] cements himself as one of the most deft and most enjoyable novelists working today. Artie wasn't known for his joie de vivre, but he usually didn't fantasize about ending it all this close to lunch. The World War II era comes alive in this novel, not just the fighting itself, but the blanket effect it had on everyone.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra | Waterstones

Her father is a lawyer defending citizens against outlandish accusations brought by the fascist government. Thus, he’d named his toupees after their personalities: The Heavyweight, The Casanova, The Optimist, The Edison, The Odysseus, and The Mephistopheles. Maria Lagana leaves Italy for LA to work for Mercury Pictures working her way up to being the right hand to Artie Feldman- one half of the brother duo that owns the studio. Before reading Mercury Pictures Presents, I wondered if Anthony Marra could successfully move from the late 1900s and early 2000s back to the early 1940s, and from wartime Chechnya to wartime Hollywood and Italy. I wonder if he started this as linked short stories and then decided to combine it into one big overflowing stew.In four days, he would sit at a witness table on Capitol Hill, where he would testify alongside the heads of Warner Bros, MGM, Twentieth Century–Fox, and Paramount. The novel’s most fascinating move is the way it teases out the complications of realism — particularly in the service of propaganda. He has six toupees mounted on mannequins in his office, each a larger size than the previous one, each with a different name and personality.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra book review - The

Fascism and Catholicism had educated her in navigating repressive ideologies, and growing up a girl in an Italian family meant you were, existentially, suggested rather than shown. Marra’s sobering, complex debut intertwines the stories of a handful of characters at the end of the second war in bleak, apocalyptic Chechnya. There’s a screwball comedy playing, but it’s not on the screen; it’s in the corporate office of Mercury Pictures.

Nino’s mother taught him how to light a photograph according to its purpose, its audience, and its subject.