My Hollywood

Aug 12, 2010 Eileen Granfors rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: families, local-color, new-classic

"My Hollywood": This is the book I have been waiting for this year--something that sets my heart on fire with genuine love for the characters and their interactions and wisdom (or fears).

What is special about Mona Simpson's "My Hollywood" is that it tells the story of families with nannies, and as readers, we follow the struggles on both sides. The mothers who employ the nannies carry tremendous guilt, attachments to their jobs and their commitments in the big world; the nannies have left their...more "My Hollywood": This is the book I have been waiting for this year--something that sets my heart on fire with genuine love for the characters and their interactions and wisdom (or fears).

What is special about Mona Simpson's "My Hollywood" is that it tells the story of families with nannies, and as readers, we follow the struggles on both sides. The mothers who employ the nannies carry tremendous guilt, attachments to their jobs and their commitments in the big world; the nannies have left their own families at home to raise American children, so even though they are sending needed money home, they are missing their children's childhoods.

In "My Hollywood," the focus is on musician, Claire, and her husband, Paul, who works in television. Their son, William, is one more love in their lives, but a baby changes everything, no matter what anyone else may say. They hire a nanny, Lola for whom "Hollywood" is Santa Monica, CA.

Lola narrates her part of the story. She falls in love with the children she is nanny to, 5 days a week for Claire and Paul, and weekends only for Helen and Jeff's boy, Bing. Lola thinks in monetary terms, how much pay for how much work, yet her heart is filled with love for the kids.

Claire and Lola develop a friendship. Helen and Jeff want to woo Lola away from Claire. Will money trump love? Lola knows she can return to the Philippines sooner if she accepts Helen and Jeff's offer.

We follow the boys, William and Bing, from babyhood through nursery school and on into sports leagues. Decisions are made about nannies, who needs what, and the nannies themselves must sometimes decide how to handle their employers.

This is not a snarky "insider's" look at bad parenting. This is a book that delivers people with all their beauty and all their flaws. The voices ring true from the fast-paced world of television and comedy to the loneliness of a house where the parents aren't home to the joy of the nannies' playdates and parties with the children they watch over.

I thought that I would never love a character more than Katherine Guildford, the mom in Quindlen's "One True Thing." And then I met Lola. I have been finished with this book for one day, and already I miss the beat of Lola's soft, sweet voice, her remarks on American culture, her yearning to do what is right and best, and her comforting heart.

"My Hollywood"--a gift to us from a most gifted writer, Mona Simpson.(less)

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May 21, 2013 Ruth rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was hard to stick with. The writing is good, but the plot is elusive. The characters are not shallow, but I never really felt that connected. The writing is poetic, but it is too soft, and becomes like a watercolor that is blurry and pale. This novel needs more than washes of color that allude to things like weather and buildings, nuances of expressions rather than full frontal portraits. I found it convoluted and jumpy.

The point of view goes back and forth between the two main charac...more This book was hard to stick with. The writing is good, but the plot is elusive. The characters are not shallow, but I never really felt that connected. The writing is poetic, but it is too soft, and becomes like a watercolor that is blurry and pale. This novel needs more than washes of color that allude to things like weather and buildings, nuances of expressions rather than full frontal portraits. I found it convoluted and jumpy.

The point of view goes back and forth between the two main characters-- a woman named Claire and a her nanny, a Filipino woman named Lola. Claire is a composer. Her husband works too much. She has mixed feelings about being a mother, a wife, and an artist. She also has issues with bowel leakage, which is only partly why she doesn't want to have sex with her husband anymore.

Claire's counterpoint is Lola, who is a grandmother in her fifties. There are some similarities between the women. Claire's husband works all the time, so she never sees him. Lola has not seen her husband in years. Claire chooses not to be with her child all the time, which is what Lola is doing by being a nanny. Lola's primary focus is earning and sending money home, which sounds heroic, but she is paying for college bills and house repairs. Her husband has a white collar job, it is not a situation where great sacrifices are warranted, but why Lola is willing and able to live this quest is never explored. She is not as depressed about things as Claire, whose internal articulations of inadequacy and self-doubt fill page after depressing page.

The problem with this book is that there is no real problem. Claire is too weak a character to represent the struggle of an artist. She is too well off to represent the challenge of life as a working mother. Her life is her life, and while she is very sympathetically portrayed, I don't root for her, or worry for her, or even really care too much about her. Lola is not much better. She can always go back home. I began to wonder if she was just as depressed and unhappy as Claire, but too realistic and hardworking to express it.

I kept trying to get into this book, but did not even finish it. This is unusual for me, but I had to return it to the library and was decided I had had enough. (less)

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Oct 06, 2012 Catherine Bateson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this novel. I first read Mona Simpson years ago, after hearing an interview with her on Radio National - she was talking about the absent American father and how this absence had influenced a generation and it was a compelling theory which made me think.

My Hollywood, in some ways, returns to this issue. But it's the counterpoint between the female voices that are beautifully rendered here. We see life from the alternating points of view of Lola, the Filipina nanny, and Claire, th...more

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Nov 13, 2011 tina added it

i wanted to read 'anywhere but here' but this was all i could find at the bookstore. i just read kakutani's review, which has admittedly unduly influenced my own. I wasn't very captivated when i started the book. i liked the substance, but the form kind of got in the way. in general, i like accents, but at first Lola's voice didn't flow. Claire's voice was much more readable, but i had to get used to fragments simpson uses. like kakutani, i also thought of spanglish while readying this. while i...more i wanted to read 'anywhere but here' but this was all i could find at the bookstore. i just read kakutani's review, which has admittedly unduly influenced my own. I wasn't very captivated when i started the book. i liked the substance, but the form kind of got in the way. in general, i like accents, but at first Lola's voice didn't flow. Claire's voice was much more readable, but i had to get used to fragments simpson uses. like kakutani, i also thought of spanglish while readying this. while i can see why one would call claire whiny, i found her totally sympathetic. she's simply a bad mother who doesn't know how to be better. she doesn't seem to want to be a better mother until she fires lola. that's where the book becomes much more interesting. having lola in her life suspends the disbelief that her life as it is can make her happy-that she doesn't need to be a better mom or that her husband will step up. but after lola leaves, claire accepts that her kid needs her to be his mom, whether she likes it or not. kakutani complained that we don't understand why the marriage falls a part-why they don't work it out. she suggests that claire's struggles are those of liberal yuppies. but i disagree. claire is a person resisting her role as a mother-which is completely compelling, given the fact that she's talented, has a rotten mother, and just doesn't have that instinct everyone else seems to have. if a person has such a talent, should it be easy to put it aside-if you're a woman that answer is always yes but even today i don't see too many men putting theirs aside. people don't really talk much about being a bad mom-they just judge them. they don't talk about envy for other mothers, other's marriages, and making friends. so with claire and paul's marriage, i thought the answer was pretty clear-paul wanted a wife that would either be a mom or employ a live-in one. he wanted a wife that would patiently wait and still do pursue her own goals, whether professional or family oriented. Claire wanted a partner that she didn't have to pay. she couldn't wait for her husband to be a dad or her husband.
divorce would seem the quickest way for a parent to become a mom or a dad-and it seems to work. maybe all this is banal, but i found it interesting-particularly when you have a consistent outsider's point of view commenting on it whose own life turns out much differently than she would have suspected. i like how lola's character is unveiled slowly. her own relationship with her kids, her husband and america completely changes during her ten years in the US-which is interesting and believable. i wish the end could have turned out differently-it's not a happy ending at all. always chasing the money and some love. but at least there is some closure between claire and lola. that's nice-just a big price to pay. (less)

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Oct 05, 2011 Rebecca rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: chicklit

I don't know why I bothered with this book. I didn't like the previous book I read from this same author, but it came up, so whatever. I was blah on this book too. I don't know why. The topic is okay, but just how it's written, it just doesn't do it for me. This book is about two different women's life in Los Angeles. One is your typical "Hollywood" mother. She and her husband moved out west so he could get a low level job writing for a TV show before he becomes the toast of town. They have a so...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Jennifer Rayment rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Good Stuff

Characters are very realistic
Makes you think about the life of a Nanny
Very honest
some nice dry humor

The Not so Good Stuff

I disliked pretty much all of the characters.
Couldn't understand the decisions the characters made or have any understanding of the worlds they are from
Quite depressing
Writing style seemed to be almost fragmented, which left me lost and confused
Uncomfortable to read at times, as some of the thoughts the characters mention bring back my thoughts while I w...more

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Dec 14, 2010 Nina rated it 4 of 5 stars

A lot of people compared this book to "The Help". I truly doubt whether any African-American servant in the south ever made close to what the Filipina women earn working for their California boss-ladies. The Filipinas come to America to work as domestics, and Lola, one of the protagonists, sends home close to a million pesos, putting her kids through school and enabling the family to fix up their home in the Phillipines. At one point, Lola is offered $125 a day to watch a kid...she turns it down...more

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Nov 02, 2010 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Angelenos, fans of literary fiction

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction

This amazing novel devoured me as I devoured it. I was confined to bed, recovering from a virus but finally able to read; the perfect excuse to do what I spend most of my time doing anyway, but in this case purely for my own enjoyment.

There was so much to enjoy. Claire, new mother, wife of an aspiring TV writer, herself a composer, is quite simply adrift and overwhelmed by motherhood. Surrounded by the kinds of mothers you find in books such as The Nanny Diaries, Claire is a unique character w...more
This amazing novel devoured me as I devoured it. I was confined to bed, recovering from a virus but finally able to read; the perfect excuse to do what I spend most of my time doing anyway, but in this case purely for my own enjoyment.

There was so much to enjoy. Claire, new mother, wife of an aspiring TV writer, herself a composer, is quite simply adrift and overwhelmed by motherhood. Surrounded by the kinds of mothers you find in books such as The Nanny Diaries, Claire is a unique character who doesn't fit in.

Lola, who becomes Claire's nanny, is a Filipina with five children of her own back home. Her views on motherhood are in a certain way more like the other mothers in Claire's neighborhood. She works in America with the sole purpose of sending money back to the Philippines so her children can be educated and become successful adults. Despite herself, she becomes emotionally involved with her American charges, fulfilling all the nurturing impulses she had never been able to give to her own children.

This is an excruciatingly emotional book and that is what makes it so compelling. But it is also savvy with its snarky look at West Los Angeles society and its sensitive look at nanny culture. Yes, there is such a thing, comparable to the upstairs/downstairs conventions in British fiction. Mona Simpson's creation of the underbelly of immigrant life legal and illegal in modern Los Angeles, with its customs, it views on American life, its dangers and solidarities, is a feat in itself, alternately horrific and hilarious.

For several years in the first decade of the 21st century, I was a tutor in LA. Week after week, I entered homes just like the ones in My Hollywood and tried to help kids with their math and language arts. I observed mothers who had plenty of money but barely a moment to actually nurture their children. In back hallways and kitchens, I passed by the housekeepers and nannies who kept these women's homes in some kind of order. I worked with children whose attention was so fixated on the parents they rarely saw that math facts and "critical thinking" (the postmodern conception of reading comprehension) had absolutely no relevance to their lives. Because of these experiences, I know that Mona Simpson is telling the truth in her novel.

I am saying this because some reviews I have read express doubts about the veracity of the tale. Readers, you can trust Mona Simpson here. This is the real deal.(less)

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Oct 26, 2010 Agatha rated it 1 of 5 stars

Novel. Deals with similar issues as Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Juxtaposes the voices of a 30-something mother of one (a son) and the Filipino grandmother nanny who cares for her child during the week. The nanny has a family of her own, with a husband, children and grandchildren back in the Philippines but works in the States to earn $$ to send back to her family so they can get a good education. A good education is of ultimate importance to her. Her values compared with the values of the Ameri...more Novel. Deals with similar issues as Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Juxtaposes the voices of a 30-something mother of one (a son) and the Filipino grandmother nanny who cares for her child during the week. The nanny has a family of her own, with a husband, children and grandchildren back in the Philippines but works in the States to earn $$ to send back to her family so they can get a good education. A good education is of ultimate importance to her. Her values compared with the values of the American family are clearly different. After her time with the one family, nanny has subsequent jobs with two other families.

In the end, I thought this would be a better book than it actually was, so I can't say I really recommend it. I feel like it could easily become a big hit and a best-seller, a la The Help, but I cannot say that I connected very well with any of the characters. Perhaps more distasteful to me, however, was the generally dystopian outlook of the entire story. In that way, it reminded me a bit of Revolutionary Road. In fact, as I was lying in bed last night, I got to thinking that one could very easily come up with a thesis of, "Mona Simpson's My Hollywood has a dystopian outlook on American modern life and, more particularly, family life and marriage," and the paper would just about write itself. A possible outline:

A. Nanny's family itself is separated for over 30 years. Result? Won't give this away, but it's not good.
B. First family (30-something parents and 1 son) – husband works way too much, wife feels unfulfilled, child suffers. Result? Won't give this away, but also not good.
C. Friends of first family – husband has affairs, wife has miscarriages, wife over-throws herself into domestic life, personal beautifying, etc.
D. All the other nannies and their families – a font of pertinent material here; depending upon how much you want to get into it, you'd get a good many pages out of this
D. Second family (Judith):
1. Single mom has child w/o a father
a. Financial problems
b. Child's developmental problems
2. Judith's subsequent relationship & marriage with new man; many probs ensue:
a. Strains in the Judith/nanny relationship
b. More work for nanny
c. Less $$ for nanny
d. Child suffers
e. Nanny "encouraged" to leave
E. Mother of First Family – raised her child as a single mom (so she never grew up with a good sense of a normal family) – today still has a long-term partner of 30 years, with whom she cannot even live b/c then they wouldn't get along
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Oct 09, 2010 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

On their first date, Paul and Claire have already divvied the responsibilities of keeping their careers and managing a child: The former as a TV comedy write; the latter as a classical composer.

"50/50," Paul tells her -- which in retrospect becomes the laughable math of a man who will spend 14 hours day with other writers, trying to create comedy. A sound stage where he looks more at home than when he is at home, and a steady stream Diet Coke coursing through his bladder. Claire's not exactly hi...more On their first date, Paul and Claire have already divvied the responsibilities of keeping their careers and managing a child: The former as a TV comedy write; the latter as a classical composer.

"50/50," Paul tells her -- which in retrospect becomes the laughable math of a man who will spend 14 hours day with other writers, trying to create comedy. A sound stage where he looks more at home than when he is at home, and a steady stream Diet Coke coursing through his bladder. Claire's not exactly hitting her quota, either, with deadlines for commissions to write, and milk to make. Not to mention she feels like a misfit among her mommy peers.

Enter Lola, a Filipina nanny charged with watching their baby William. Lola is trying to earn as much cash as possible to send back to her family in the Philippines. She wants better lives for her children, stresses on education, followed by career, all shrouded in virginity. So she mails money, mails money, mails money, subsisting on a single luxury: A cup of coffee a day.

"My Hollywood" is Mona Simpson's juxtaposition of these two cultures: The Santa Monica wives with their absent husbands, diamond earring envy, and play groups. A posse that compares nanny salaries divided by duties, and plant "your kid might be autistic" seeds.

Lola, meanwhile, is one of the leaders of a group of immigrant women who watch the children, and sometimes reluctantly iron shirts. They have a similar "keeping-up-with" mentality, knowing what each nanny makes and what she has to do for the check. There is job jockeying, and gossip about the employer families. Here they have a special insight, as the behind-the-scenesters who empty laundry hampers and are privy to the misplaced bank statements and love letters.

In another corner: Helen and Jeff are the best couple friends of Claire and Paul, and a sort of measuring stick. Jeff is in a similar industry as Paul, and is more successful; Helen wants to make babies, and seems to be up to her sexual organs in red hot romance with her husband. Lola watches their son Bing on the weekends, and does it so well that they dangle dollar signs in front of her in an effort to steal Lola's permanent services. She can't be swayed. Emotionally, she has big love for little Williamo; Rationally, she multiples those dollar signs to determine just how much money she has given up to remain loyal to the tot.

Claire struggles with finding balance between composing and mothering, and is allotted just two phone calls per day to her husband while he is at work. He is, however, always at work. She understands that his work is more financially lucrative, and her art -- her one true love -- suffers under second billing.

Writing-wise, this book is a curiosity. Simpson does a bang up job of separating the voices of her dueling protagonists. Lola maintains an accent so strong that Williamo slips into it on the playground. But Claire's voice is the trickier mimic. It's not always easy to know what she is thinking about, and the decoder ring is pages from a reveal. For instance, she briefly mentions throwing her underwear away. It takes to the end of the chapter to figure out that she is incontinent. Sometimes entire paragraphs include a set of unrelated sentences. This requires very careful reading, and a willingness to wait for answers, rather than tossing out "WTF's" willy-nilly. It's a style that takes a little getting used to, moreso than Lola's fragmented English. Sometimes it is a senseless frustration with little reward. Sometimes it feels like a technique that should be stolen, attempted and honed.

Idea-wise, there are plenty of conversational cues for all sorts of gin-soaked book club sorts, starting with the similarities and differences between the employees and the employers; Lola's emotional commitment to the children, verses being a signature on a check to her own family and the way that plays against Claire's love of making music, and stilted emotional connection to her son; The way Lola is treated as a possession that can be passed off to another family; What happens when you fail at what you love to do.

In one scene, Claire has just received a terrible review in the New York Times, the newspaper of record for everyone within her social scene. She treads lightly, knowing they all know. But when she meets up with Helen, her friend doesn't even address it. Claire keeps waiting for her to say something. Meanwhile, Helen has just had a miscarriage. Yet Claire continues to obsess over her friend saying nothing about the review. Their grief is probably similar, but Claire cannot jack herself from her own gravitational pull long enough to empathize.

The best paragraphs of the story follow: Claire begins cutting and arranging flowers. Baking. Looking for the thing that might be her thing, now that she has had a public failing with her actual thing. The idea that she has used up her music allowance, it won't regenerate. She'll have to find a new identity.

Plot-wise, this book is a bit of a snooze. So much of it is repetitious day-to-day, and coupled with Simpson's style, there is often not enough of a reward to justify it. And there are too many characters on the periphery. In most cases, they would be ignorable, but they continue to crop up throughout the novel, so they must be kept track of. Aside from a handful of moments, this book was just not at all enjoyable. (less)

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Oct 07, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wasn't always crazy about the writing style--found it unnecessarily obscure in parts, but I did really like the characterization of Claire and Lola in counterpoint. The lives of privileged stay-at-home mothers compared to their nannies, was well-done, avoiding too much stereotyping, except when that is the point! It really made me think about the way we treat babysitters and immigrant workers. Unfortunately, many of the characters are really hard to like, especially among the mothers. Slowly w...more

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Sep 29, 2010 Alex Templeton rated it 3 of 5 stars

The thing that really affected my opinion of this book--which is about a Hollywood community of rich folks and their often Filipina nannies, alternately narrated by a nanny and a mother--was its style. Simpson is a literate and intelligent writer, but I found that there were, for lack of a better term, gaps. Thoughts would be finished and another picked up, and I felt that I was missing something, that something necessary had not been written in between. This made it harder to connect to the sto...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

My Hollywood is a soulful, insightful journey through the worlds of motherhood and caregiving in "Hollywood," (which is really Santa Monica, CA). Told alternately from the points of view of a Filipina nanny (Lola) and the young mother she works for (Claire), the story takes place during the 1990s, a time and place I know well, and the tone always rings true. The novel delves deeply into the psyches of these two women and centers primarily around Lola's experience as she balances her competing de...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Parenthood, I often write on greeting cards to new parents, is an exercise in failure. When you’re finished tiptoeing through the tulips with the Snugli strapped to your chest, take your addle-brained self to a quiet room and steel yourself against the mistakes you are about to make. Acknowledge right then and there from the Comfort Grand Swivel Glider that many – if not most – of the actions you will take in association with this helpless miniature human are likely to be wrong-headed, brash, il...more Parenthood, I often write on greeting cards to new parents, is an exercise in failure. When you’re finished tiptoeing through the tulips with the Snugli strapped to your chest, take your addle-brained self to a quiet room and steel yourself against the mistakes you are about to make. Acknowledge right then and there from the Comfort Grand Swivel Glider that many – if not most – of the actions you will take in association with this helpless miniature human are likely to be wrong-headed, brash, ill-advised, potentially hazardous, publicly embarrassing and may necessitate costly talk therapy later in the child’s life. There, you said it. Don’t you feel better? Now you can get back to the business of doing the best you can.

Claire, the (anti)heroine of Mona Simpsons “My Hollywood” would have done well to recite this mantra a time or two. Her feelings of inadequacy as a mother are paralyzing. Her once promising career as a composer has stalled. The sincere adoration of her husband is little consolation, as he spends the greater part of each day (and night) in the writers’ room of a successful sitcom. Her ship is stuck between the rock of the stay-at-home moms, to whom parenting seems so effortless and rewarding, and the hard place of the career moms, who sail in and out of the lives of their children as they litigate, deliver babies and shoot films. Everyone in this scenario, by the way, has a nanny. This is, after all, Hollywood. And their mastery of the art of delegation is like a foreign language to Claire.

Enter Wanda Luwanza, known simply as “Lola” (because who has time for entire names), one of an army of Filipinas who have left their families and careers and husbands at home to earn hard currency in America diapering, wiping, sous-chefing, playgrounding, laundry-folding, crumb-sweeping and free overtiming (in addition to, occasionally, professionally averting the eyes and closing the ears). She cares for – and comes to really care for – the excitable little boy she calls Williamo, and increasingly also for his mother, Claire. She is really, really good at what she does. So good, in fact, that a hotshot director’s wife tries to ply her away from Claire with a lucrative offer. It’s a tough call for a domestic like Lola: on the one hand, more cash in less time to fulfill the dreams of her family on the other side of the globe; on the other, troubled Williamo and hapless Claire.

Mona Simpson tells her story by inhabiting both mother and nanny, alternating chapters and voices. Claire’s pieces whisper with disappointment and melancholy. “Marriage hadn’t changed me. Having a child did. I was a dandelion blown.” The writing is like Claire, beautiful and sad, peppered with musical metaphors and arty twists. There is a touch of whimsy to her, notwithstanding all the grief (which does tend to grate…). When the maestro conducting her symphony asks her for notes, she thinks – but doesn’t dare say – that it should sound “like a country piano teacher humming to himself, with his hands in the pockets of an old sweater walking down a lane of trees.” Why doesn’t she just say that to the stuck-up conductor?! Why doesn’t she ever stand up for herself? It’s enough to make a reader scream SNAP OUT OF IT to the printed page.

Lola, by contrast, is clearly the adult in the room. Her voice, despite all pidgin imperfections (which I found sounded remarkably authentic), has such clarity of purpose, such eyes-on-the-prize determination masterfully evoked by the terse, but definite tone Simpson gives Lola. Describing a friend’s employer who wants to baptize her child against the father’s wishes, Lola wonders: “But how much does Sue really want? Like another blouse she saw? I have always been careful to want one thing only.” In Simpson’s world, Lola even gets some laughs (a lot more than Claire gets, and her husband is a sitcom writer), like when another babysitter suggests that her charge might one day have a yacht of her own, she quips: “Babysitters. Even if they are in America one week from a swamp in the jungle, they know what is a yacht.” Lola has a fully functioning moral compass and a sense of pride in her past and her present. Sadly for her employers, she keeps most of her insight to herself.

I am not going to lie to you. This is a tough read. Like I said earlier, somebody needs to get Claire a Red Bull and a Mel Brooks album. And for anyone who has had the good fortune to be on the receiving end of a Filipina’s care, you probably didn’t really need this much information on her inner life. The mere thought of her being half a world away from her own family as she cared so tenderly for yours had you sticking your fingers in your ears and singling la-la-la. You did not, shame be on your head, even consider that under that smiling, round-faced façade there could be such introspection, such clear understanding of her circumstances and your own, such depth of feeling – and reading this book makes you (ok, me) rather uncomfortable. That notwithstanding, I am glad I made it to the end. I respect how Mona Simpson imagined the resolution, how the place each character ends up is both so unexpected and so apt. I love her as a wordsmith. I hear her unspoken message loud and clear: Be careful what you wish for…
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Nov 22, 2010 Sarah Sullivan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fare

Are novels about white women and their maids the new hot topic for fiction? I hope not. Simpson is a really good writer. I love her attention to detail and the specificity with which she describes domestic details. I enjoyed reading this book, and it's better than "The Help," for example (oy). Characters are more multi-faceted & well-developed. But like with that book, we have an older, non-white woman as co-protagonist and moral center of the narrative, where the younger white woman she ser...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Brooke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

Really I'd give this novel 3 1/2 stars. For the most part I enjoyed the story line itself but the delivery was confusing and disjointed.

This novel follows Claire, a 35 year old composer with a 6 month old son William. She is married to Paul who moves his family to Los Angeles to pursue a career writing tv sitcoms. Claire is soon overwhelmed with the demands of her new-born while still trying to compose her symphony so they decide to hire a Nanny.

Enter Lola, a 52 year-old Filipina with 5 childre...more Really I'd give this novel 3 1/2 stars. For the most part I enjoyed the story line itself but the delivery was confusing and disjointed.

This novel follows Claire, a 35 year old composer with a 6 month old son William. She is married to Paul who moves his family to Los Angeles to pursue a career writing tv sitcoms. Claire is soon overwhelmed with the demands of her new-born while still trying to compose her symphony so they decide to hire a Nanny.

Enter Lola, a 52 year-old Filipina with 5 children & a husband back home. She has come to the US to earn money to send home to put her 5 children through University. She is an extremely intelligent and loving woman who other mothers try to lure away from Claire, but Lola is also devoted & will not leave her young charge.

What I found unappealing about the novel:
1) This novel is full of choppy sentences. The novel is told in the first person, alternating between Claire & Lola. For Lola's chapters I can understand the author's use of broken English, but the incomplete sentences in Claire's chapters is confusing & distracting.

2) This novel was published in 2010, however it starts in 1999. But you don't realize the time is 19 years earlier until several chapters in (and then at that point you realize why other things progressed the way they did given the different time setting).

3) The story-line itself is not very fluid and this is apparent in two ways. The first is you don't realize when the story has jumped ahead a few years in the middle of a chapter (or in transition from one chapter to the next). The second is that in the middle of the chapter the timeline will fluctuate, but not obviously so the reader (or at least I) doesn't clearly understand the time element.

4) There are so many characters -- other nannies, the children they watch over, the other mothers & husbands. It gets confusing who belongs to what household (aside from the 2 main households in the story line).

So even though I had a hard time following the story I still enjoyed the characters & the plot. Lola is hard not to love (and some other characters are hard not to hate or pity). This book gives an interesting look into a world of the moderately-rich & the rich who employ nannies and housekeepers when there is a stay-at-home mom. (less)

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Oct 07, 2011 Melissa Ooten rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book, but I thought I'd like it more. It's told in two voices: that of the mother/symphony writer, Claire, and her Filipino nanny, Lola. It's deeply depressing in terms of both women's lives. Claire desperately wants to write symphonies but can't find the time (even with a nanny) and most of her sections are about her immense guilt over wanting to do what she loves while needing to (help) raise her son. The father, of course, is virtually absent as a writer on the cusp of success in...more

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Nov 24, 2010 Sonya Doernberg rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'll miss reading this book and definitely feel like I've lost a friend now that I'm done. At the same time, the book illudes the kind of depth and writing that would make it "literary fiction" as opposed to just "chick lit." Every time you think the story will get deeper, you get thrown back in shallow waters--very disappointing but true to Hollywood.

As far as chick lit-goes, the writer seems heavy-handed with her humor as compared to Jennifer Wiener or Sophie Kinsella both of whom are much li...more

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Oct 11, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nov-dec-2010

With the publication of novels like Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus's The Nanny Diaries (2002) and Kathryn Stockett's The Help (**** Selection Jan/Feb 2010), there is no shortage of books about women and their domestic employees. Even so, Simpson's pragmatic and delightfully observant nanny Lola shines in this story of contemporary child rearing. Critics did find Claire, with her privileged lifestyle and chronic self-doubt, a slightly less compelling character. And, in stark contrast to all oth...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars

So far so good. "My Hollywood" is the story of two women: (1) a composer-turned-mother who struggles with modern motherhood and (2) her son's nanny. Certainly as a mother who has had her own struggles with her identity as a woman/mother, I appreciate the book's themes and exploration of motherhood a great deal. The author has a deft touch and an interesting style. I read the first page of the book a couple of months ago and didn't like her style -- it felt too clipped. (Read the first page to se...more

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Aug 18, 2010 Julia rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: nannies, parents, people who are interested in social justice

My Hollywood explores a number of issues and tensions--motherhood vs. career, parenting vs. hiring nannies, spending on your family vs. spending on yourself, giving vs. receiving, and all of what these issues bring up--from a variety of perspectives through the first-person narratives of two characters. And through these tensions, very little is resolved, which is a nice way to show what life is really all about--exploring and striving for resolution, but never really getting there.
As someone wi...more

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Oct 10, 2010 Lynn Pribus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interesting. Complex. Alternates between narration by introspective, frustrated, sometimes whiny, sometimes generous Claire and Lola -- the Nanny for whom English is clearly not the first language. Lola is also frustrated both with the moms and her situation, but fiercely loving and loyal toward the children she cares for. She is sending money back to the Philippines for her own children to go to college there and hasn't seen her husband, Bong Bong, in five years.

We had a maid when we were on Ok...more

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Sep 15, 2010 Ashley rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book. It reminds me of The Help in that it follows a family through the ups and downs from the different perspectives of Claire, a newlywed and then new mother, and Lola, the Filipina nanny. It blends the vastly different cultures, class differences, life expectations, ect. while the authentic, believable narrative keeps the pages turning. (I know, that sounds like I copied it from the back cover or something. :-)) The details and wisdom are amazing as it looks in-depth at id...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Shelley rated it 1 of 5 stars

I had many problems with this novel.

First and foremost I could not stand Claire, the mother. I know we are supposed to like Lola more than Claire and that Claire's redemption is part of the whole plot. However, I found Claire to be narcissistic and boring. She was an imbecile who should never have had children.

Second, as someone familiar with Los Angeles, I found the picture of Los Angeles that the author presented to be stereotypical and shallow. Los Angles is a very complex city with many laye...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Gail rated it 2 of 5 stars

I would probably give this a 2.5 if possible, but it's not...

Someone told me that if I liked "The Help" (which I did), I would love this book (which I didn't). I'm guessing the logic behind this statement is that both books explore the lives of housekeepers/nannies and those who employ them. Both books also feature a rotating point of view between the central nanny, Lola, and the central white employer, Claire. Both deal with issues of race and class in America. That's about the extent of the si...more I would probably give this a 2.5 if possible, but it's not...

Someone told me that if I liked "The Help" (which I did), I would love this book (which I didn't). I'm guessing the logic behind this statement is that both books explore the lives of housekeepers/nannies and those who employ them. Both books also feature a rotating point of view between the central nanny, Lola, and the central white employer, Claire. Both deal with issues of race and class in America. That's about the extent of the similarities, though.

My Hollywood is set in 1990s Los Angeles, for the most part, and features families on the West side of LA and the primarily Filipina group of nannies who serve them. I had a few problems with this book: First, it was completely devoid of emotion. The narratives were flat and almost robotic, and even when something dramatic occurred, it was related in a matter-of-fact way that was jarring and left me very detached from the characters. Ultimately, I didn't really care that much what happened to anyone in the book.

I also had a problem with the voice used for Lola. In her POV chapters, we seem to be in her head as she relays events and thinks about them. In these chapters, the author has chosen to have her speak to us in broken English. While this might work in dialogue, it really doesn't make sense here. If we're in her thoughts, they would be fluent, presumably in her native tongue of Tagalog. While I wouldn't be able to read that native tongue, I would expect a translation to be equally fluent. There was also a fragmented quality to the writing which wasn't successful, in my opinion. All of these devices felt belittling to this character. Did the writer want us to see her as these West siders did? It would have been more interesting to see the "real," inner woman that they don't see.

I wondered about the author's personal life, as there isn't a single example of a happy relationship of any kind in this book. Happy little moments, perhaps, but overall a serious downer.

The Help bristled with tension, and this book was entirely lacking in it. Although I don't tend to love the use of dialect, in the Help it made sense; since those women spoke (roughly) like that, their thoughts would have been along those lines. Here, depicting the inner dialogue in dialect makes no sense. In the Help, I cared about what happened to the characters. Here, I did not. And finally, I found the Help uplifting. I found this book depressing.(less)

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May 30, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't understand the complaints about the characters not being likeable. As if anybody in real life only knows likeable people. How boring would that be? the tension comes from how will these people work out their problems and I wonder if I would have done it the same way they did. More important to me in this type of novel is if the characters learn about themselves and evolve through the story, which they absolutely did. I find Mona Simpson's writing style tough to get into, but so rewarding...more

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Sep 14, 2010 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-fiction, hollywood

Wow, what a wonderful book. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year, one of those stories that sucks you in and makes you think about the characters long after you've finished reading. The author has created two sympathetic and complex protagonists and juxtaposes their lives in a poignant and memorable way. It's easy to become invested in the fate of both Claire and Lola. They could not be more different in terms of background and lifestyle, but they're both struggling with remo...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you have read The Help, you will want to read this book. It is not about maids in the South and how they were mistreated, but it does remind one of it somewhat. I have always thought that women should find the best quality child care possible. Trying to be cheap in an area where you are leaving your most prized possession is ludicrous. Parenting is such a big responsibility, and the care of your child by another is just as big a responsibility. For nine or more hours a day, your child is left...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Miko Lee rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting novel told thru eyes of fillipino nanny and her composer employer in Hollywood. The characters felt very real. The composer needy, neurotic and somewhat anxious in her marriage to a comedy writer. The nanny perfunctory down to earth. Providing immense love to her various charges and constantly sending money home to ensure her own children receive a solid education to live a better life then she. I was surprised at the authors ability to get into the head if the nanny. When I was work...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

I WOULD GIVE THIS READ 3 1/2 STARS. IT IS WRITTEN IN TWO VOICES - CLAIRE THE MOM - MARRIED TO PAUL - LIVING IN A RENTAL IN LOS ANGELES WHILE PAUL GOES AFTER HIS DREAM OF BEING A COMEDY WRITER. SHE HAS PUT HER OWN CAREER ON THE BACK BURNER - SHE IS A JULLIARD GRAD, A MUSICIAN AND COMPOSER. WHEN THEIR SON WILL IS BORN, SHE HIRES A NANNY. THE NANNY, LOLA IS THE SECOND VOICE. SHE IS IN USA FROM THE PHILLIPINES TO SAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PUT HER YOUNGEST DAUGHTER THROUGH MEDICAL SCHOOL. HER HUSBAND STAY...more

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