Typewriter Beach

 

MEG WAITE CLAYTON

Stats: Trade paperback, Harper, expected publication 7/1/25.

How acquired: Won in a Goodreads giveaway.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: When I first started reading, I was immediately captivated by the writing. I love Old Hollywood, old movies, the stars. With the young Isabella being an aspiring actress, and Leo being a blacklisted screenwriter, there was a lot of name dropping. And to my surprise, it bothered me a little at first. When the author would mention someone real, Garbo, Hitchcock, Bergman, and give an anecdote that I’d not ever heard before, I would wonder if it was true, or was the author taking poetic license. From what I could gather, the author did a lot of research, especially about Hitchcock and blacklisting, but even so, how much was true and how much was for the sake of this story? But once I got really settled into the dual stories – Iz and Leo in 1957, Iz and Leo’s granddaughter, Gemma, plus neighbor Sam, in 2018 - I was totally riveted and along for the ride, no longer caring how much was true and how much was not.

Wonderful, realistic characters. Vivid descriptions of Carmel.

Achingly beautiful.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

1957. Isabella Giori is ten months into a standard 7-year studio contract when she auditions with Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a charming little Carmel-by-the-Sea cottage for a secret rendezvous. There, she is awoken by the clack and ding of a typewriter at the cottage next door. 

Léon Chazan is annoyed as hell when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. But soon he’s speeding down the fog-shrouded Carmel-San Simeon highway, headed for the isolated cliffs of Big Sur, with her in the passenger seat. 

2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe with a World War II-era French passport, an old camera with film still in it, two movie scripts, and a writing Oscar that is not in her grandfather’s name—raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was.