Not everyone liked The Garden on Sunset; in fact, a couple of us really hated it. Everyone else liked it well enough, especially because it was such an easy read. Our hostess had the fabulous idea to email the author, Martin Turnbull – and he replied!! They had quite the email chit-chat going on, and Mr. Turnbull even provided us with some discussion questions. How cool! We thought that this book was going to be the first in a trilogy, but apparently he’s going to write NINE of these suckers.
Some highlights:
- Not much character development; sometimes hard to keep them straight
- Characters predictable; scenarios a little ridiculous
- Prohibition lasted 13 years
- Rabbit Test was early pregnancy test; in fact, ALL the rabbits died!
- Cosmopolitan Pictures later became Cosmopolitan the magazine
- There were so many small events, but no one big plot – read like a blog
- It was hard to relate to others what it was actually about
- The time jumps were extremely annoying
- The end of each chapter resolved the issue at hand, instead of building suspense
- SO much name-dropping, although is that how it really was in Hollywood at that time?
- Did Turnbull just write this to live out his own fantasy?
- Every extraneous character was famous, like in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon!
- Garden of Allah Hotel similar to the Chelsea in Patti Smith’s book?
- Re-introduction of Prohibition – hell no, we wouldn’t follow the law
- Prohibition + Great Depression = bad combo
- Clever that Gwendolyn made a copy of the brooch
- Confused about the talent agent with Gwendolyn’s coaster – did he have it all along, or was it just a coincidence?
- The coaster idea was interesting and should have been used more
- Martin Turnbull = Marcus Adler?
- Maybe Turnbull just had too many ideas & crammed them all into the first book
Movies:
The Cat’s Meow
Revolutionary Road
TV:
Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
And in honor of Book Two of the Garden of Allah novels, which is all about casting the role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind,” here is a great Youtube video. It’s interesting to watch after reading The Garden on Sunset because it has (briefly) Talullah Bankhead and you can hear George Cukor directing someone off-camera. It also makes it clear what a huge search it was to find just the right Scarlett, which is also a modern-day dilemma with so many popular books.
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