I think there ought to be a term for the thing that happens to your brain when a book hits your center of delight. It’s more than just enjoyment of a good plot, writing or a device or even characters. Some books have only one of those, not all four and my center of delight is a chord, not a single note. I’m intrigued, entertained, loving the many-layered connections and the fiction-within-a-fiction device the author uses to expand points that the main narrative couldn’t hold. Yes, I enjoy the books I read - all of them, but not on this expansive level.

Flanery tells the story through a narrator, Desmond, looking back to 1950 when he was forced to leave the US because of the McCarthy/Hoover House Committee on Un-American Activities. He’s a novelist & screenwriter whose latest script is in production with John Marsh as director. They’re old friends, but John’s wife Mary is planning to testify that Desmond as a probable Red. Oh and Mary is playing the female lead in the movie. Nice. But it gets worse, the male lead is being played by Desmond’s boyfriend, Myles. So not only is he possibly a Communist, he’s definitely a pervert by the standards of the time and even separately either charge will land him in prison. He has plans to leave, but can’t tell anyone, especially Myles, until the very last minute, and maybe not even then. He doesn’t want to endanger Myles’s career or reputation now that he has entered into a ‘lavender marriage’ with a mutual friend, Helen, who is also in the movie. She married Myles to give him ‘cover’ and also herself since she, too, is gay.

There is a lot of philosophizing and agonizing over what this was like to go through and while I’d like to say it’s heavy handed - it isn’t. Really, can you be heavy enough when it comes to this kind of bigotry and stripping of a person’s Constitutional rights? The fact that the people doing it couldn’t see they were no better than the Commies and Fascists they so claimed to hate. That they were destroying the fabric of freedom itself and denying the Constitution they so claimed to love. It would be merely sad if it weren’t still happening today, but it is and so it’s worse. It’s rage-inducing with a lovely side of frustration.

But it isn’t all negative - there are moments of joy, love and beauty that shine just as brightly. The relationships Desmond has are good and positive and they nourish him when he can’t have the one he wants, or can’t have it publicly.

Interspersed with his memories of 1950 framed by his present situation, is the script in its entirety. I seriously want to see this movie. It’s kind of noir-ish and James M. Cain-ish. Deftly done. At the end of each script section we see memos that go back and forth between John and Desmond and a slimy executive bent on removing anything offensive, non-Patriotic or even remotely sexy “to the point that no virile man could ever hope to be aroused to action or perversion or even mild onanistic pleasure by anything he sees in our castrated little picture.” p 208

Another device is the use of Desmond’s short stories based around pieces of things that happen to him such as one about the Marsh’s housekeeper being interrupted by two men who have been staking out the Marsh house and tailing John and Desmond around sometimes. She’s preparing for a party the Marsh’s are given and calls John to tell him that they’re in the house. Desmond overhears John’s part of the conversation only and he writes a story where she is forced to spy on the Marshes because she’s really a German who has flown her country by way of England where she’s turned into a double-agent. Under threat of exposure, she agrees.

Both the script and the stories allude to Desmond’s situation back in the day and before that. They are mostly fictional, but shine light into a lot of dark areas.

Oh it’s fabulous and it will probably end up in my top 5 for the year. ( )