The Hollywood Dodo : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: "We all know what Hollywood does to people."
Review: Dodos are supposed to be long extinct birds, but in the novel "The Hollywood Dodo" by British writer Geoff Nicholson, there are Dodos galore. There's seventeenth century medical student William Draper, and he actually owns one. He hopes to find a mate for his solitary female and begin breeding. Then shooting forward into the 21st century, there's Californian, Rick McCartney, auteur of the future, who hopes to make a film called "The Restoration of the Dodo."

A third main character in this novel, British Doctor Henry Cadwallader, doesn't have Dodos on the brain when he decides to accompany his petulant daughter, Dorothy to Hollywood. Dorothy insists that her recent contacts with an agent promise great opportunities in the film industry, so Henry goes along for the ride--he's a little skeptical about the entire business and is well aware of the horror of sleazy casting couch stories. He sees his role as providing gentle, background support for Dorothy. Once they get to Hollywood, Dorothy's leads turn to dust, but Henry hits the ground running. Soon Henry is up to his neck in intrigue and film offers. He's involved with an ex-film star turned real estate agent, and before Henry even realizes what's happening, he's scheduling erotic encounters in a garish mansion that boasts a plastic faux thatched roof and a portcullis. The house appears to be "mock-Tudor, but the mockery had reached a level of hysterical taunting."

Add to the story, a one-legged past-life therapist, The Royal College of Physicians, a couple of exhibitionistic swingers, the king of porn films, and a bizarre little place called The Beauty Vault (specializing in film memorabilia and boasting a secret green door), and the end result is a yet another wildly entertaining and engaging novel from Nicholson.

The chapters are divided equally between Draper in the 17th century and McCartney and Cadwallader in the present--Henry Cadwallader and Rick McCartney narrate their own chapters in the first person. This shift of voice--back and forth--works extremely well. The third person narration for William Draper's 17th century chapters removes the sense of the immediate, and it is in no way confusing to move back and forth between centuries and chapters. I should add here that I don't think all writers could handle the shift in time and persona as well as Nicholson can. He's the master of this sort of thing. Somehow he keeps all the threads of the story perfectly in order and carefully arranged. As a result, the pacing in this extremely clever novel is simply perfect. Nicholson toys with the idea of destiny, and the inevitable and unavoidable pull towards fate. He smoothly weaves the plot back and forth until all the seemingly unconnected elements are neatly tied together.

Nicholson's novels all explore obsession, and in "The Hollywood Dodo" the obsession is, of course, the Dodo. Corruption--in its many forms is one of the major themes in the novel--there's corruption of the flesh (Draper's disease and the Plague), but far more than that is another form of corruption--corruption of the soul. Dorothy certainly doesn't seem unwilling to do what it takes--they are just no takers. And just how much does it take, for example, for McCartney to sell out? Or is corruption the inevitable result of wanting something so badly that one is prepared to do anything to get it?--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: The Dodo as Metaphor and Punchline
Review: In this delectable satire about Hollywood and extinction, Geoff Nicholson serves up a complicated recipe of has-beens, wannabes, maybes, and a few dodos - both literal and figurative. British physician Henry accompanies his aspiring actress and yellow-toothed daughter Dorothy to Hollywood where she is supposed to meet with a talent scout. On the airplane, their paths cross briefly with self-described "Auteur of the Future" Rick, a young man prone to panic attacks and bouts of self-importance. Rick harbors an obsession with dodo birds which leads him (and the reader) to the mysterious story of William Draper, a 17th century medical student afflicted with erythrohepatic porphyria, a genetic condition that causes skin to blister with exposure to sunlight. Draper, too, is obsessed with dodos, and sets out to procure one of the last of the species on display in a seedy quarter of London. As Henry discovers a similarly afflicted man trying to sell him an animation cel of a dodo, as Rick struggles with a bizarrely vivid past life regression brought on by a beautiful one-legged woman, and as Draper tries desperately to find a mate for his beloved but aging dodo, real-life intrudes on film, becoming art in itself, and questions arise about what is contrived and what is real. And of course, since this is a novel, those questions ultimately mean nothing since all is fiction.

With chapter titles cleverly named after movies, Nicholson never loses sight of the artificiality of the genre he is mocking. The scenes that take place in Hollywood are hilarious, while Draper's affliction and affections are touchingly told. Perhaps the most daring turn is Nicholson's dovetailing of disparate plot elements into a wild, unexpected finale. While much is left unexplained, the narrative wink at the end brings it all together.

This is a truly fun novel. Nicholson's wit is more sly than biting, and he relishes the absurd. Below the hilarity lurks more serious themes - of corruption (what else in Hollywood?), of obsession, and of mortality - but these ideas never alter the established tone. Readers will find that they can't put this novel aside for more than a few hours before picking it up again to devour the next chapter.