Category: Reading Challenges

Book Review – A Beautiful Way to Die by Eleni Kyriacou

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About the Book

PLAY THEIR GAME
Hollywood, 1953. Young actress Ginny Watkins is turning heads. Even the legendary – and married – actor Max Whitman can’t resist the allure of the hottest new starlet. He promises Ginny the world, in return for the right favour.

DO WHAT THEY SAY
London, 1954. Stella Hope, once the most famous actress in Hollywood, has been ousted to Ealing Studios after her divorce from the powerful Max. Just as she accepts her fate, she receives a letter, blackmailing her for a mistake she made many years ago.

OR THEY’LL BURY YOU
Two women on either side of stardom find themselves in the orbit of the same beguiling man. And one night, in the shadows of a glamorous Oscars afterparty, their lives are changed forever…

Format: Hardcover (416 pages) Publisher: Head of Zues
Publication date: 8th May 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

A Beautiful Way to Die takes the reader beneath the glamorous facade of 1950s Hollywood to reveal its darker side and the people who dwell there: the money men motivated by profit, the publicists who can spin a positive story out of any disaster, the medical men who prescribe the uppers and downers, and the fixers who make the problems – and the problem people – disappear.

It’s a precarious world whether you’re an aspiring actress, the next big thing or a studio’s most bankable star because everything could change in a moment, especially if there are things in your past best kept secret.

Ginny’s initial joy at being given a contract by the studio (even if she’s had to change her name and appearance to get it) turns to frustration when she’s given one dead end role after another. And between roles there’s barely enough money to make ends meet meaning girls have to resort to being the entertainment at wild Hollywood parties or posing for risque photographs.

‘It was a tightrope, this town, she thought. Just one huge balancing act. Keep going, one foot in front of the other, even if you’re exhausted, no matter. Take these pills, don’t look down, don’t complain, look straight ahead… And if you fall? There’s no safety net… If you made it, the rewards were so high. And if you didn’t, well it was a beautiful way to die.’

When Ginny meets the studio’s leading man, Max Whitman, she believes everything’s about to change and her future success is assured. After all, aren’t they going to be Hollywood’s next ‘golden couple’? But she’s forgotten that, in Hollywood, everyone’s playing a part. ‘One may smile, and smile, and be a villain’, to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Stella knows all about the ruthlessness of the Hollywood system. She and Max were once the ‘golden couple’, even if their marriage was mostly a sham. She’s no longer the box office draw she was once was but vainly tries to live up to the diva image. Ealing Studios is not Hollywood so she’s bouyed up by the friendship that develops with her make-up artist Maggie, newly arrived on the scene. And Stella badly needs a friend because of the blackmail letters she’s been receiving. Who could be sending them? Who could possibly know her secret, something that happened years ago?

The author throws into the mix a third character, an unnamed woman confined to a sanatorium. Just who is she, why is she there and what will happen if she finally pieces together the fragments of memory to create a clear picture? I thought I knew exactly where things were going but, boy, did the author prove me wrong.

In A Beautiful Way to Die the author has served up a delicious cocktail of intrigue and passion with a generous dash of darkness. Think dirty martini. I absolutely loved it. And for observant readers of the author’s previous book, The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou, there’s a tiny literary easter egg.

I received a review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Dramatic, compelling, suspenseful
Try something similar: Watch A Star Is Born (1954)

About the Author

Eleni Kyriacou is an award-winning editor and journalist. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, Grazia, and Red, among others. She’s the daughter of Greek Cypriot immigrant parents, and her debut novel, She Came to Stay, was published in 2020. The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou was inspired by the true-crime story of the penultimate woman to be executed in Britain.

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Book Review – Exit West by Mohsin Hamid #20BooksofSummer2025

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About the Book

In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, two young people notice one another.

They share a cup of coffee, a smile, an evening meal. They try not to hear the sound of bombs getting closer every night, the radio announcing new laws, the public executions.

Meanwhile, rumours are spreading of strange black doors in secret places across the city, doors that lead to London or San Francisco, Greece or Dubai. Someday soon, the time will come for this young couple to seek out one such door: joining the multitudes fleeing a collapisng city, hoping against hope, looking for their place in the world.

Format: Hardcover (229 pages) Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Publication date: 2nd March 2017 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

I approached Exit West with some trepidation having struggled with novels with elements of magical realism in the past. I wasn’t sure I could embrace the concept of doors through which you pass to other parts of the world. As it turned out, I liked how the author concentrated on the motivations for migration, the experience of those who migrate and the response of those on the receiving end of migration rather than details of migrants’ journeys. The doors concept allowed this simplicity and I think also emphasised the suddenness of the transition that migrants experience.

The story begins in an unnamed war-torn city that most readers, given when the book was written, have assumed to be Syria although, sadly, today it could just as easily be many other countries around the world. The conflict makes use of modern technology such as drones giving it a slightly dystopian feel.

Although different in personality and background, Saeed and Nadia meet and fall in love. Soon, however, it becomes clear there is no future for them in the city in which they live and they use an intermediary to exit via one of the doors, ending up first in Greece, later in London.

But wherever they go they often find themselves in a similar situation: living in basic conditions in workers camps or as squatters in sealed off neighbourhoods. As more and more people use the doors, dodging or bribing guards to gain access, there is conflict – sometimes violent conflict – with ‘nativists’ who resent the influx of people from different cultures, who speak different languages and have different religious practices. In some places, the migrants face attack by government forces. It leads Nadia to wonder if they have swapped one bad situation for another. ‘The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed to familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered if she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.’

Their experiences gradually change Saeed and Nadia’s relationship, each responding in different ways to their new situation. Saeed’s instinctive reaction is to seek out people similar to himself and put down roots, Nadia’s impulse is to move on in search of some indefinable ‘something else’.

Interspersed with Saeed and Nadia’s story are brief vignettes describing the experiences of others who travel through the doors. One particularly heart-warming story demonstrates how migration can help forge new connections.

Exit West as well as being beautifully written is definitely a book to get you thinking. For instance I was struck by the notion that we are all migrants of a sort, migrants through time. That even if we stay in the same place, things change around us over time and we must adapt to them.

Exit West is book two of my 20 Books of Summer 2025.

In three words: Thought-provoking, insightful, imaginative

About the Author

Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke , The Reluctant Fundamentalist , How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia , and Exit West , and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as winner or finalist of twenty awards, and translated into thirty-five languages.

Born in Lahore, he has spent about half his life there and much of the rest in London, New York, and California.

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