Did You Hear about Kitty Karr?: A Novel

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I hope to see more modern fiction novels written with this type of honesty about the experiences of growing up “passing” in history. So just keep that in mind that this novel puts you right in the middle of the action right away, at least for Elise’s storyline. The story as I mentioned could have been a great story but it suffered from a disorganized storytelling and a weak modern framing of that story. These chapters read like they had been either inserted or entirely re-written much more recently, and thus did not feel fully developed.

The story became a lot more interesting to me after it opened up a second timeline about a single mother in the segregated South in the 1930s-50s. In the 1950s, daughter Mary graduates high school, assumes a white persona, and starts working in Hollywood where she encounters many people with their own secrets. Startled to find the sixteen-seat conference table full, they didn’t break stride as they took the two remaining seats. Now she's been nominated for an Oscar that could expand her successful acting career, but she's not sure if that's what she wants.The premise is that actress Kitty Karr (Tate) passes away and wills her fortuned estate to the Black St. As Elise digs deeper into Kitty’s past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living.

There was some drama between Elise and her fiancé, and a romantic plot with Elise and another man, and which distracted from what I was really interested in, which was Elise’s relationship with her sisters and her personal response to Kitty’s death. An impressive debut that covers a wide range of topics from racism, family, fame, motherhood and more. is a dual timeline story, set in the 1950s and 2017, featuring old Hollywood as well as the modern film industry. I think while of course, there are things that happen to Kitty, she makes the choice to go along with it too. James was a producer who played fourteen instruments, wrote and arranged music, and had a vocal range from Maxwell to Barry White.In the process, Elise discovers something about Kitty that she did not know and in so doing, discovers something about herself, as well. In the process, Elise discovers something about Kitty that she didn't know and finds herself as well. This is an incredibly thought-provoking debut - it made me feel very conflicted between all the characters and interested in learning more about the issues in the book. That said, the book does address several important issues: racism, colorism within the Black community, and sexism within the Hollywood machine.