bery gone wrong. Other selections aren’t
so memorable. Still, the fascinating
premise has yielded some dark gems that
are worth the price of admission. (Dec.)
Ziegfeld Girls
Sarah Barthel. Kensington, $15.95 trade
paper (300p) ISBN 978-1-4967-0610-2
Barthel’s soapy, underwhelming his-
torical charts the travails of two young
women in 1914: Suzanne Haskins, who
is white, and her black servant and
friend, Jada, after Suzanne finally gets
her big break with the Ziegfeld Follies in
New York City. Suzanne left Richmond,
Va., two years prior and brought Jada
along to help her; while Suzanne mingles
at lavish parties every night, Jada does
her shopping and mending and puts her
own dreams on the back burner. Jada is a
talented singer and dancer, but is reluc-
tant to step out of Suzanne’s shadow.
But when Bert Williams, the black star
of Ziegfeld’s new show, takes notice of
Jada’s talents, all bets are off, and Jada
and Suzanne’s friendship may not survive
the fallout. The behind-the-scenes look
at the Follies is interesting, but Suzanne
is wooden and Jada isn’t given enough
room on the page. A tepid mystery
involving threatening notes the girls
receive takes a backseat to the backstab-
bing and melodrama. Those seeking a
more thoughtful representation of race
and class in the early 20th century
should look elsewhere. (Jan.)
A Hundred Small Lessons
Ashley Hay. Atria, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-5011-
6513-9
Hay’s engaging third novel (after The
Railwayman’s Wife) explores the lives of two
women connected by a house. In Brisbane,
Australia, Lucy Kiss; her husband, Ben;
and their young son, Tom, have just moved
into the home where Elsie Gormley lived
for more than 60 years. Elsie’s children
decided that it was time for her to move to
a nursing home because of a recent fall after
which she lay helpless on the floor for
hours. Through flashbacks, Hay recounts
Elsie’s life with her husband, Clem, and
twins Don and Elaine. Elsie’s memories are
cleverly juxtaposed against Lucy’s early
motherhood, and though Lucy has traveled
the world with her husband as he changed
jobs and Elsie lived in Brisbane her entire
married life, the similarities in the two
women’s lives gradually come to the fore-
front. Hay’s perceptive prose illuminates
both Elsie’s and Lucy’s lives, resulting in a
rich dual character study that spans genera-
tions. (Dec.)
The Enchanted Clock
Julia Kristeva, trans. from the French by
Armine Kotin Mortimer. Columbia Univ., $30
(304p) ISBN 978-0-231-18046-7
Kristeva’s marvelously strange novel
about a woman captivated by an 18th-
century artifact reads like a philosophical treatise wrapped in a love story with
a little mystery mixed in. Nivi Delisle is
a Parisian psychoanalyst and magazine
editor fascinated by Claude-Siméon
Passemant, engineer to King Louis XV
and creator of a large four-faced clock that
sits in the palace at Versailles and is
