Author v Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
It's a triple header in WSIR #36!
Laaaadieees and gentlemen, boyyyys and girls, and all my friends in between ….
It’s time for another author v author V AUTHOR, featuring the high-low literati sensation, Taylor Jenkins Reid!
If you’re new here, or you just can’t remember all the minutia of this book email for crying out loud: in “What Should I Read Next”-land, we don’t pit authors against each other, but we DO look at one author’s books side-by-side so you can make the most Educated Choices in your reading journey. (See past author showdowns with Celeste Ng and Yaa Gyasi here.)
When I love a book, I immediately seek out the author’s past works and eagerly anticipate their upcoming books. You too? And I’ve come to really love comparing a few works by one author because you can see the evolution of a writer’s style, see where their gifts lie in storytelling, and even see thematic through-lines that they consistently address. (… did I just describe the foundation of ninth-grade English class? Anyway.)
This week’s selection features three novels by Taylor Jenkins Reid, who is a real Internet Fan Favorite because her books tend to be compulsively readable, masterfully set, and pop fiction reads without being stupid. Plus she brings Los Angeles to life in so many different, captivating and specific ways, from Hollywood to Laurel Canyon to Malibu. So! Read on for my suggestions and sadly, one that isn’t.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a book-within-a-book wherein aging, reclusive movie star Evelyn Hugo summons a young magazine writer to finally create the tell-all autobiography of Evelyn’s career and her many love affairs. A little bit Elizabeth Taylor, a little bit Ava Gardner, and a whole lot of old Hollywood glamour, drama, heartbreak and love - this is a page-turner of a read with a dash of mystery dropped in. I stayed up late reading it for the sheer enjoyable scope of the storytelling, but what’s stuck with me is the commentary on how Evelyn (and the magazine writer, and many women) seamlessly weave artifice and authenticity together to try to succeed in a world where the systems can be stacked against them. It’s a delicious saga of a book.
Okay, I have been talking about Daisy Jones & the Six since the FIRST! NEWSLETTER! because I honestly think this is an almost perfect pop fiction novel.
It’s an “oral history” telling of a late sixties-early seventies supernova band - how they came together, how they rose to stardom, and what happened next. To me, TJR (that’s what I call her, you know, like we’re buddies) has a transcendent gift for voice and dialogue, making an oral history structure a fiendishly clever choice because, literally there’s nothing BUT dialogue. You hear from multiple characters and see their subtle POV shifts, allow for transparently unreliable narrators, and let a cascade of voices paint the picture of the Laurel Canyon-Sunset Strip life. You feel cool just being around these characters even as their choices become more destructive, and more consequential.
Also not only does TJR write a great book but then she writes the actual SONG LYRICS for the band and people, I honestly cannot wrap my head around the ability of an author to fictionally posit that this is the greatest album of all time and then actually post up and WRITE THE SONGS. I’m getting the vapors jut thinking about it.
Mmm, okay. So, I was ready to LOVE Malibu Rising, which centers around one legendary 1983 Malibu party hosted by four adult siblings, with multiple flashbacks to their parents. The debauchery of the party can be fun, and there are moments of gorgeous, dark writing about surf-town Malibu (which feels entirely contemporary rather than 1983 but I guess - no cell phones?) So there are some things to like.
That said, this is a much more straightforward novel than the other two and to me, it suffers for it because her plotting and exposition are not nearly as strong as her dialogue. It feels like a “show your work” creative writing project that never got properly edited so there are many overwrought descriptions of surfing, for example, and lazy “he was the most famous man in the world” sentences.
Also, the book is split into “before the party” and “the party” which creates very uneven pacing (we meet people! they’re gone! Important things happen in the final moments that aren’t really resolved in any way!) And in contrast to the other two books, her female protagonists are all circling around the men in their lives which is a real dynamic, of course, but it makes them strangely passive in their own stories.
The Verdict
Apparently these books were written as a loose trilogy, linked by the character of Mick Riva, and you can absolutely see the novels as family members with shared characteristics. The layered book-within-a-book telling, the iconoclastic female protagonists, and the backdrop of fame and self-destruction are terrific in both Daisy Jones and Evelyn Hugo, not to mention the consistent themes of what makes a family, what makes a meaningful life, and how love can be wielded in so many ways from platonic to romantic to destructive to creative. Plus, Los Angeles is not just the backdrop but a living, breathing character in both, to great effect.
(Yes, yes, all of the above points also run through Malibu Rising but with much less of the style, effortlessness, or uniqueness of the other two. That book needs to sit in the corner for a while and think about what it’s done.)
If you love Daisy you’ll love Evelyn and vice versa, but I have to give my final vote to Daisy Jones & the Six. It’s tauter, vibe-ier, and mesmerizing - like you can see the shimmery, hazy concert footage in your mind.
The Reading Question of the Week:
Picture it, you’re at a COVID-free cocktail party - what book are you embarrassed to admit you have never read?
Also in full transparency, I re-read the hiking bits of Wild WHILE ON A HIKING TRIP, which is so meta. Oh, you’ve never read Wild? Here’s why you should.
As always, all links go to Bookshop.org, which supports the independent bookstores you know and love, and some new ones to discover. If you’re looking for a different kind of book, you can see all of my past recommendations here.