Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt

Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt

Pure Hollywood

And Other Stories

by Christine Schutt

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2018, 144 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The sensational new story collection from one of our sharpest, most original, and daringly cinematic stylists, National Book Award finalist and O Henry Prize winner Christine Schutt.

In one eponymous novella and ten stories, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, from a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn, love and hurt. 

With Pure Hollywood Christine Schutt gives us sharply suspenseful and masterfully dark interior portraits of ordinary lives, infused with her signature observation and surprise. Timeless, incisive, and precise, these tales are a rush of blood to the head, portals through which we open our eyes and see the world anew.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Intimate portrayals of darkness told in Schutt's tight and affecting prose." - Kirkus

"Schutt is always in control in this work by an experimental American writer of unparalleled style." - Publishers Weekly

"Schutt's restrained, provoking tales hold detailed impressions at arm's length, as it were, leaving readers to explore life's uneasy truths viewed through an unrelenting lens." - Booklist

"Love, negligence, irresponsibility, accident, and obsession combine with loss to make each story an event readers will remember vividly...This book will appeal to short story fans, especially those who enjoy the writing styles of J.D. Salinger and Katherine Mansfield. " - Library Journal

"Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain't seen nothing yet. Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit." - Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus

"This book is a masterwork that hits way harder than its weight class, and achieves what great fiction always achieves--it commands us to be aware." - Matt Sumell, author of Making Nice

"Pure Hollywood is pure gold....Come for the art of her exquisitely weird writing and stay for the human drama. I loved each story - the quick flashes as well as the longer stories. Each one damaged my composure as a reader and fascinated me as a writer. Bravo!" - Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Eileen and Homesick for Another World.

This information about Pure Hollywood was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Christine Schutt

Christine Schutt is the author of two collections of stories, Nightwork and A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer. She is also the author of the novels Prosperous Friends, Florida, a National Book Award finalist, and All Souls, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more short stories...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Margo's Got Money Troubles
    Margo's Got Money Troubles
    by Rufi Thorpe
    Forgive me if I begin this review with an awkward confession. My first impression of author Rufi ...
  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.