Karin Panotchitch, raised on a sheep farm and then married off to a drunken loser, finds her way to 1939 Hollywood at the tender age of sixteen, determined to be a star. Along the way, she meets up with Ramon Classic, who with his many brothers is ready for a hostile takeover of MGM, Mama Gravy, the colorful and opinionated proprietor of the run-down Gold Rush brothel, and Sister Agatha, the mysterious nun who seems to turn up every time Karin (now Carol Pan) rides the trolley. Hollywood history, flying bullets, and big dreams make for a lively story about what happens when a sheep farmer's daughter tries to make her dream come true. First in Swanson's Tinseltown Trilogy.
A review by EM JAY (Gather Director of Chaos & Uprisings) W.
- It's Kippy!
I do enjoy historical fiction because the genre makes the past fun and easier to relate to. We know what the famous people were doing, but what about the shlubs like the rest of us? How different is the life of the common folk throughout the ages, really?
Hollywood Sinners, like the Journey song, Don't Stop Believing, is about a small town girl living in a lonely world, but this babe doesn't have a nickel to catch the train to anywhere. What Karin does have is a thumb and the great certainty that she has what it takes to be a star. All she needs is to get to California and be discovered.
Follow her adventures as she rises from the dirt ruts in the roads left by Okie trucks to the gutter on her quest to fame and nylon stockings! With a know-it-all like Mama Gravy there to advise her (and enlighten us to a bit of history the books keep hidden), how can she go wrong? This girl's got a mouth and she ain't afraid to use it, not even against gangsters or their mama!
What I loved best about Hollywood Sinners, was Peter Joseph Swanson's use of dialogue to keep the story moving. I felt like I was the butterfly on the wall watching and hearing the characters' interactions and conversations. Language so captures the era and I enjoy the spin on English each generation takes it on.
If you're looking for something fast-paced with a touch of noir, I would recommend Hollywood Sinners, but be careful. It might make you think and you just may learn something. It is a book well enjoyed with a bowl of spaghetti.
- It's Kippy!
I do enjoy historical fiction because the genre makes the past fun and easier to relate to. We know what the famous people were doing, but what about the shlubs like the rest of us? How different is the life of the common folk throughout the ages, really?
Hollywood Sinners, like the Journey song, Don't Stop Believing, is about a small town girl living in a lonely world, but this babe doesn't have a nickel to catch the train to anywhere. What Karin does have is a thumb and the great certainty that she has what it takes to be a star. All she needs is to get to California and be discovered.
Follow her adventures as she rises from the dirt ruts in the roads left by Okie trucks to the gutter on her quest to fame and nylon stockings! With a know-it-all like Mama Gravy there to advise her (and enlighten us to a bit of history the books keep hidden), how can she go wrong? This girl's got a mouth and she ain't afraid to use it, not even against gangsters or their mama!
What I loved best about Hollywood Sinners, was Peter Joseph Swanson's use of dialogue to keep the story moving. I felt like I was the butterfly on the wall watching and hearing the characters' interactions and conversations. Language so captures the era and I enjoy the spin on English each generation takes it on.
If you're looking for something fast-paced with a touch of noir, I would recommend Hollywood Sinners, but be careful. It might make you think and you just may learn something. It is a book well enjoyed with a bowl of spaghetti.
Review Of An Absolute Gem Of A Book~, June 14, 2010 By VictoriaSelene Sky~Deme
It's been quite a while since a book floored me so, in a really good way of course, but also in a very, very thoughtful way.
Hollywood Sinners~by Peter Joseph Swanson isn't at all what you'd expect.
The beautiful, failing heroin Karin's got more heart and more chutzpah than any other character I've come across in a literary work in a long time.
Peter takes her and breathes an unfailing depth into her. You see her sweet little struggle with herself, her determination to surpass all the convoluted crap that tries hard to make her falter on her quest to become a Hollywood Diva of the late 1930's as she tears it out of an unquestionably sucky past into a future replete with possibilities that somehow always gets skewed and trip her up. But this little sweet pea is unwavering and pushes on and on and NEVER gives up, not ever.
She's a definite character study in perseverance.
Peter brings back to rich and colorful life the 1939 Hollywood. The dialogue is exquisite, decorated in humorous lingual twists that makes you chuckle but also have a certain sharp wit about them edged in deep little pockets of sociopolitical commentary that hits you from left field and you go, ahhhhh, and smile and nod knowingly.
Sharp, witty, crafty, the conversations between the colorful, diverse, so alive characters in this book are priceless, absolutely enthrallingly rich, rich, rich!
On her quest to diva hood we meet the most surreal characters that get their hooks in Karin who becomes CAROL and hook her up with situations of refined irony, characters styled and guttery, bitter and side splitting comical.
Mama Gravy, one of the most attention-grabbing characters in Hollywood Sinners had me in stitches of gutter laughter at every turn of page. Her phraseology and attitude toward life made me grin and made me cringe.
Overall, there is no other book in which you will find Tinseltown quite like THIS, enriched with exquisitely fleshed out characters that suck you in with their dilemmas, their strengths, their very existence, and nowhere else will you find such predicaments as in Hollywood Sinners, predicaments to make you laugh uproariously, shout out loud to guide the characters so alive on the pages, and sometimes your little heart may just skip a beat here and there because a lot of us are shapes of Karin in one way or another.
Shootouts, and irony served rich, conversations so true to the swish style lingo of 1939.
And my favorite movie princess of the 30's makes an appearance in the sinuously jaded beauty of Francis Farmer. Gotta' tell you, kiddos, you ain't never seen Francis like THIS!
And I can tell you , I will never look at cacti the same way again. Oh my!
And the ending, the ending, should've maybe made me tear up a little bit, but even on those last pages,damn, but this girl, my Karin, she got heart and the soul of a survivor, and she made me smile, kind of soft and kind knowing, and feeling all right.
Can you tell how much this book made me grin and feel and just thoroughly groove on every page? Maybe I personalized it a little bit and became Karin for a while, maybe cuz she and I kinda maybe share a little bit of past. You gonna feel the same, because we all got a smidgen of Karin Panotchitch in us.
As for Peter Joseph Swanson,the man's got TALENT, and he's got HEART, and if you don't wanna miss out on one the most exceptionally written and thought out literary gems of today, get your copy of HOLLYWOOD SINNERS and lean back and fall through into the wonders and giggles and smiles and delicious twists and turns of Peter Joseph Swanson's scrumptious and complex mind and the characters it shapes, the stories it dreams and tells the world between the pages of books called The Tinseltown Trilogy which begins with Hollywood Sinners!
It's been quite a while since a book floored me so, in a really good way of course, but also in a very, very thoughtful way.
Hollywood Sinners~by Peter Joseph Swanson isn't at all what you'd expect.
The beautiful, failing heroin Karin's got more heart and more chutzpah than any other character I've come across in a literary work in a long time.
Peter takes her and breathes an unfailing depth into her. You see her sweet little struggle with herself, her determination to surpass all the convoluted crap that tries hard to make her falter on her quest to become a Hollywood Diva of the late 1930's as she tears it out of an unquestionably sucky past into a future replete with possibilities that somehow always gets skewed and trip her up. But this little sweet pea is unwavering and pushes on and on and NEVER gives up, not ever.
She's a definite character study in perseverance.
Peter brings back to rich and colorful life the 1939 Hollywood. The dialogue is exquisite, decorated in humorous lingual twists that makes you chuckle but also have a certain sharp wit about them edged in deep little pockets of sociopolitical commentary that hits you from left field and you go, ahhhhh, and smile and nod knowingly.
Sharp, witty, crafty, the conversations between the colorful, diverse, so alive characters in this book are priceless, absolutely enthrallingly rich, rich, rich!
On her quest to diva hood we meet the most surreal characters that get their hooks in Karin who becomes CAROL and hook her up with situations of refined irony, characters styled and guttery, bitter and side splitting comical.
Mama Gravy, one of the most attention-grabbing characters in Hollywood Sinners had me in stitches of gutter laughter at every turn of page. Her phraseology and attitude toward life made me grin and made me cringe.
Overall, there is no other book in which you will find Tinseltown quite like THIS, enriched with exquisitely fleshed out characters that suck you in with their dilemmas, their strengths, their very existence, and nowhere else will you find such predicaments as in Hollywood Sinners, predicaments to make you laugh uproariously, shout out loud to guide the characters so alive on the pages, and sometimes your little heart may just skip a beat here and there because a lot of us are shapes of Karin in one way or another.
Shootouts, and irony served rich, conversations so true to the swish style lingo of 1939.
And my favorite movie princess of the 30's makes an appearance in the sinuously jaded beauty of Francis Farmer. Gotta' tell you, kiddos, you ain't never seen Francis like THIS!
And I can tell you , I will never look at cacti the same way again. Oh my!
And the ending, the ending, should've maybe made me tear up a little bit, but even on those last pages,damn, but this girl, my Karin, she got heart and the soul of a survivor, and she made me smile, kind of soft and kind knowing, and feeling all right.
Can you tell how much this book made me grin and feel and just thoroughly groove on every page? Maybe I personalized it a little bit and became Karin for a while, maybe cuz she and I kinda maybe share a little bit of past. You gonna feel the same, because we all got a smidgen of Karin Panotchitch in us.
As for Peter Joseph Swanson,the man's got TALENT, and he's got HEART, and if you don't wanna miss out on one the most exceptionally written and thought out literary gems of today, get your copy of HOLLYWOOD SINNERS and lean back and fall through into the wonders and giggles and smiles and delicious twists and turns of Peter Joseph Swanson's scrumptious and complex mind and the characters it shapes, the stories it dreams and tells the world between the pages of books called The Tinseltown Trilogy which begins with Hollywood Sinners!