Editorial Content for Pool House
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Reviewer (text)
With POOL HOUSE, Mary H.K. Choi becomes the latest YA author to make the leap to adult fiction. Here, her focus on characters and their interactions with one another feels almost claustrophobic in the intensity of her narrative scrutiny.
Stevie, who is in her early 20s, works at a chain burrito restaurant. She has grown up on the periphery of Hollywood, knowing that her mother, Moon, once had a semi-successful film and television career, but enduring a childhood and adolescence characterized primarily from the fallout of Moon's prior fame. A recovering alcoholic, Moon also carried on a long-term affair with Mac, who played her much older white husband on the sitcom “Wabi-Sabi.” Stevie has never possessed Moon's sexual allure and finds the ways she wields her attractiveness both perplexing and infuriating.
"[W]hat makes the book interesting is the intensity and subtlety with which Choi explores her characters' relationships, the shifting balances of power, and how they wield that power, often through illicit sexual encounters."
However, those days are long gone. Moon is now too old to play the sexy women of mystery roles that once paid the bills, so she's biding her time until she's old enough to play someone's mother. She calculates whether or not to sell off her designer gowns for some quick cash, and she has moved out of her luxurious main house, renting it out to rich strangers online while living in the home's pool house with Stevie. It's far from luxurious --- an “unwholesome cottage” that's described as “cold and brutal. Still. Hostile,” which also could characterize the relationship of the two women who live there, uneasily, together.
As the novel opens, Moon learns that Mac has died, apparently by suicide after jumping from a bridge. The news rattles her and Stevie, and things get even more complicated when Adam, Stevie's formative crush who played Moon's stepson on “Wabi-Sabi,” comes to stay with them after Mac's funeral. His presence further ramps up the tension in the household, reviving conflicts and longings that have existed for years but never have been resolved.
On the surface, not much happens in POOL HOUSE, especially early on. The narrative does shift perspectives and incorporates background information, often in short chapters with witty titles. But what makes the book interesting is the intensity and subtlety with which Choi explores her characters' relationships, the shifting balances of power, and how they wield that power, often through illicit sexual encounters. This is a side of Hollywood that doesn't get portrayed all that often --- hardly glamorous but still focused on image, striving for a different version of oneself, and acting the part even if you don't get it.
The novel's simmering interiority won't be for everyone, but readers who enjoy character-driven fiction will be motivated by Choi's quietly compelling new direction.
Teaser
Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, Stevie can’t wait to move away from L.A., and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, out-of-work actress Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
Promo
Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, Stevie can’t wait to move away from L.A., and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, out-of-work actress Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
About the Book
Bestselling young adult author Mary H.K. Choi debuts a brilliantly observed adult novel about mothers, daughters and the complexity of family set against the backdrop of Hollywood.
Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can’t wait to move away from it, and her mother’s orbit, to start over.
Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too.
Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
POOL HOUSE is a course charted through the wilderness of motherhood, a story about the challenges of navigating class, fame, burgeoning sexuality and grief as two women grapple with what it means to grow up and grow older in Hollywood.
Audiobook available, read by Joy Osmanski
