lucky dogs, by Helen Shulman
That Harvey Weinstein hired a private international spy agency The person called Black Cube to squash his sex crimes articles has always seemed stranger than fiction.Well then teeth fiction.
In an author’s note, Helen Shulman notes that her seventh novel, Lucky Dogs, Inspired by two players in the global chapter of The Weinstein Story. One is actress Rose McGowan, a canary in the toxic coal mine of Twitter. Post about rape by anonymous studio exec In 2016, one year before allegations about Weinstein surfaced. the other one is, Stella Pen Pecanaka Black Cube agent tasked with gathering information on McGowan, who had earned her trust, secured a copy of her memoir that she was writing that exposed Weinstein and sent him an excerpt as a warning.
“How could one woman do this to another woman?” Schulman wondered as he read the case intently. This question may sound naive. Hasn’t she seen the basic Hollywood text “All About Eve”? Probably the best revenge and a very funny one. If you think satirizing #MeToo is #TooSoon, get back to your yoga mat.
Shulman recast McGowan as Meredith “Mary” Montgomery. An emotionally unstable starlet with purple eyes who unhappily hides out in Paris but has a bitter experience with a nasty wig-wearing film executive who nicknames Rag and self-anesthetizes. I am trying to clarify everything. She with white wine, xanax and ice cream.
In Berthillon, a Baskin Robbins in France, she meets Nina, a slightly older, decent guest. Nina, who also has “emerald green” eyes, a rare color, defended her with a flog from a few violent American male tourists. switchblade, and her business card. After researching Nina online and discovering that she works for a women’s rights organization, Mary quickly becomes romantically and ideologically infatuated.
They meet for champagne and gougère (the cooking scene in “Lucky Dogs” is, as they say, the chef’s kiss) and she hands over the manuscript. After that, her crush disappears in her e-mail.
Shulman’s latest novels, Come With Me and This Beautiful Life, both about the infiltration of technology into the human soul, ironically refer to those who can’t keep up with their day-to-day work. Lucky Dogs, which was published in 2003, considers this issue as well.
What does it mean to be a public figure in an age when everyone has a “profile”, a document in cyberspace? Is not it?
“The MacBook Air was my own opioid crisis,” Mary thinks of her Internet obsession. Feeling bad for her, she finds herself fascinated by minor characters such as “Nina’s ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend’s twin sister” on her social media. (She’s been there.) Nervous and paranoid, she tries to disappear in a black hoodie, or “Mall of America burqa,” and uses her burner cell phone to Burn like a match.
Fame in ‘Lucky Dogs’ is necessarily a temporary and fragile state. “Everyone loves Natalie,” says Rag as he tries to seduce Mary, referring to Portman. A kid playing a Spice Girls puzzle when “Victoria Beckham still looked like a human, not a Siamese cat.”
As with McGowan, after Mary’s Twitter account was shut down as punishment for her freewheeling tweets, a busy Phillips, Rosanna Arquette (“That Old Bum”) and an unnamed supporting actress (“She God Bless the Knobbed Collarbone”) flock to cheer on Merry. And Mellie thinks of chef Mario Batali, who has also faced sexual assault allegations, with “disgusting, oily red pigtails at the base of her bald-spotted head.” ing.
Merry seems predestined to be a bold victim. Her surname was originally Monroe. Her psychopathic mother was obsessed with soap operas, and she now lives in a retirement community like the Village in Florida, named after murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson. I was considering taking her christening name.
Nina, on the other hand, has always lived in invisible ink. When a journalist informs Mary, she turns out to be a Bosnian refugee to Israel, Samara Marjanovic, known by many aliases and the Hebrew name of Smadar Marantz. She works for the Dark Star, a carbon copy of the Black Cube, and is trained by the Mossad.
Her own mother absorbs the shock of the siege of Sarajevo, and Shulman describes the scene with steely coolness. “Are they napping?” asked the boy, who had been called “stupid” by her brother, looking at the grenade-hit “mangled corpses” of her parents.
Panning between the two women’s perspectives and radically different situations reminds Smadar that he must eat “grass soup.” Cheerfully sipping green juice — Lucky Dogs gradually realizes their essential commonalities.
Samara/Sumadar’s foray into espionage had all to do with her desire to become an actress. (These professions require similar “skill sets,” to put it in ill-fated dog jargon.) Both come from broken families. Both lack a sense of home. And although both are scarred by sexual violence, they are not defeated. In contrast to them, this novel has a sizzle like when her two jumpers and her cables come together.
Weinstein’s investigation was closely linked to documents, testimony, and facts. The villain, who was criticized by many accusers, was also the main character. The villains are alienated and mocked here. He wanted the two women he wanted to be pawns to dominate the chessboard. This is a boldly creative and often hilarious coda to this long, sad, gruesome true story.
lucky dogs | By Helen Shulman | 321 Pages | Alfred A. Knopp | $28
