Glen David Gold

On a winter day in 1916 American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity. Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion that brings together the fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world's last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America's doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complications--studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, "his mother."

Part One of the Novel Sunnyside

A Day's Pleasure

Kali Nichta

Gold's debut novel, Carter Beats the Devil, is my favorite book and the only book I've voluntarily read more than once, so one can imagine my excitement when I received his follow-up, Sunnyside.

It saddens me to say that I didn't love it. I did love the first half and was very excited by its whimsy, humor and possibility, but it seemed to me that it lost it's way after that, becoming rather meandering and difficult to care about. I actually put it down for a while, unmotivated to continue. 

In the end, I did care about the characters and thought the protrayal of Chaplin was fascinating, but found the ends of most of their stories unsatisfying, even perplexing.

A Day's Pleasure Part One of the Novel Sunnyside

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