The Diamond Lane the Diamond Lane Modern Family
Volume Review
Karen Karbo'southward The Diamond Lane offers a unique and humorous perspective on the materialistic values of Hollywood. An award-winning author, Karbo has published fourteen books: novels, memoirs, and nonfiction, including her best-selling "Kick Ass Women" series, a nonfiction serial in which Karbo commentates on the lives of powerful women of the twentieth century—Julia Child and Audrey Hepburn, for example—and on the life lessons one can accept from their stories. The Diamond Lane, first published in 1991, was Karbo's second novel and was selected at that fourth dimension as a Notable Book by the New York Times. The novel was reprinted this twelvemonth as part of Hawthorne Books' Rediscovery Serial, an initiative to republish exceptional works by living authors. In the author'south foreword to this reprint, Karbo describes, Karbo describes The Diamond Lane equally "an emotional autobiography," using autobiographical elements to tap into "true, powerful, and usually conflicting emotions . . . to animate the characters and ability the action."
The Diamond Lane begins with Mimi FitzHenry, a receptionist for a talent bureau and aspiring actress/screenwriter, telephoning her sister Mouse, a documentary filmmaker in Africa. Mimi asks Mouse to return dwelling house considering their mother, Shirl, has had a tragic, if comic, accident with a falling ceiling fan. The novel follows Mimi and Mouse and their family and friends in the months after Mouse's return home. A begrudging acceptance of an appointment, a wedding, a documentary, a worsening screenplay, and the convoluted intricacies of past and nowadays relationships are all elements of the piece of work.
Karbo's clever title captures the many levels of her humorous, insightful commentary on Hollywood. The "diamond lane" refers to a car lane on the freeways of Los Angeles, used past cars with more than than two passengers and designated as the fast lane through the traffic-filled highways of the city. The title suggests that the many who aspire to make information technology in Hollywood are looking to take "the diamond lane," a shortcut to success, and that in many instances, every bit the characters of the novel discover, it takes speeding down the highway with others to realize who yous are and what yous actually want.
Moreover, the title conjures wedding imagery—mod marriage being some other theme of the book. The Diamond Lane juxtaposes the tendency of many immature American women to see a white wearing apparel and diamond ring as a kind of finish line, the ultimate accomplishment of womanhood, with the same women'due south common complaint that union steals away their hard-won independence. As Mouse'southward wedding planner, Nita, says, "Used to be, everyone wanted to be free. At present everyone wants to be trapped. Only at to the lowest degree they tin can do it in fashion, right?" Even back in 1991, Mouse agrees to take the entire procedure of her nuptials filmed for a documentary that Ivan, Mimi's ex-husband and Mouse'due south first love, is filming. This novel'due south relevancy may lie in the fact that Karbo seems to have predicted the trend toward making weddings and union into fodder for cool goggle box shows (Say Yes to the Wearing apparel, Bridezillas, Whose Wedding Is Information technology Anyway, et al). Moreover, her depiction of Mouse's moral degradation as she becomes more interested in the materialistic aspects of her nuptials than the life commitment ones foretells our twenty-first century reality evidence brides.
Karbo'due south satirical portrayal of the materialism of Hollywood is as apt today every bit it was more than twenty years ago. She gives the states Ivan, the documentary filmmaker selling his organs and using sex activity with wealthy women to fund his documentaries; a preposterous "Salvage the Elephants" party hosted past a wealthy family that not only brings in a "gang of Africans in full tribal regalia" to speak on the growing need to save the elephants, but the party also includes an actual elephant in a muzzle on the beach. In add-on, in that location's Tony, Mouse'due south fiancé, who when first seeing Los Angeles, observes that "in each minimall, the same shops, [were] all geared in some manner to the upkeep of feminine beauty. … There seemed to be a preponderance of shops that recycled the aforementioned four words: Happy Nails, Friendly Nails, Friendly Rosy Nails, Rosy Happy Nails." And there's 5. J. Parchman, the quirky human being who works for Columbia Pictures and assists Tony with selling his screenplay. Karbo explains how Hollywood has created a senseless desire of fabric things through V.J.'s absurdly blunt statement:
This is what I learned … from Hollywood…the rich man, his worry goes for useless, stupid things. Frequent-flyer programs are not a thing. It makes your soul experience like a used prophylactic tossed out the car window … but what am I supposed to do … lose all those miles?
The Diamond Lane isn't some lackluster assay or violent, dry criticism of materialism. Rather, the reader laughs along with Karbo at the consumerism to which we accept all fallen victim to at 1 fourth dimension or another, while withal being able to consider how it affects the many characters in the novel and its role within our ain lives.
Although the novel has many strengths, both the overwhelming cast of characters (over fifteen recurring characters) and the way in which Karbo uses multiple points of view go ho-hum at times. With then many small-scale characters, they get difficult to remember. This may have been a strategy to draw the sheer abundance of individuals trying to succeed in Hollywood, and their failure to stand out in the crowd. Similarly, Karbo's use of multiple close third-person points of view tin can become confusing. She delves into the thoughts of not only Mouse and Mimi, simply too Tony, Mouse's fiancé, as well as pulling back to a more omniscient viewpoint, leaving us scrambling to figure out when the narrator is switching to a unlike graphic symbol's bespeak of view, and wondering why we are being held at arm'southward length from these characters from time to time.
Similarly, Karbo's creation of "the Pink Fiend," a made-upwardly conscience with traditional feminine characteristics that speaks in Mouse'southward mind and is more often than not depicted in italics, seems at times unnecessary and jarring. Mouse describes the Pink Fiend as either "her girlhood self or only a brutish enforcer of feminine values that lurked in the gene pool … passed on, quite visibly, from mother to daughter." And though the Pinkish Fiend successfully illustrates the self-doubt that many women experience, its role every bit a character (every bit opposed to a voiceless idea or tool) feels unnecessary. Frequently the Fiend's comments are redundant, equally the reader had already fatigued these aforementioned conclusions from Mouse'south keen internal insights.
These small criticisms bated, The Diamond Lane is a novel worth reading not only for its satirical sendup of Hollywood and its materialism, only also for its continuing relevance to the American way of life more than ii decades later on its outset publication. Karbo speaks to all of us who have struggled to achieve our dreams, been fraught with the need for self-discovery, navigated intricate family relationships, and so ofttimes felt besieged by the expectations of gild, especially in matrimony. The Diamond Lane aptly captures the struggle to go an developed—especially for those who accept daydreamed about forging a life in the glamor of the entertainment industry—in a fashion that makes usa laugh out loud in the break room of our boring day jobs, in the library of our film schools, or in one of our many hipster java shops.
About the Reviewer
Alex Temblador is a fiction and nonfiction writer currently based out of Los Angeles, California. This is her second book review in Colorado Review. She's had fiction published in Cigale Literary Magazine and Scissortale Review and has recently had articles published past a diverseness of outlets such as the Huffington Post and Thenextfamily.com.
Source: https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/the-diamond-lane/
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