Missing Reels
Farran Smith Nehme
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 1468309277
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The utterly winning, wholly delightful, totally cinematic debut novel of young love, old movies, and an epic search for a long-lost silent film
New York in the late 1980s. Ceinwen Reilly has just moved from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and she’s never going back, minimum wage job (vintage store salesgirl) and shabby apartment (Avenue C walkup) be damned. Who cares about earthly matters when Ceinwen can spend her days and her nights at fading movie houses―and most of the time that’s left trying to look like Jean Harlow?
One day, Ceinwen discovers that her downstairs neighbor may have―just possibly―starred in a forgotten silent film that hasn’t been seen for ages. So naturally, it’s time for a quest. She will track down the film, she will impress her neighbor, and she will become a part of movie history: the archivist as ingénue.
As she embarks on her grand mission, Ceinwen meets a somewhat bumbling, very charming, 100% English math professor named Matthew, who is as rational as she is dreamy. Together, they will or will not discover the missing reels, will or will not fall in love, and will or will not encounter the obsessives that make up the New York silent film nut underworld.
A novel as winning and energetic as the grand Hollywood films that inspired it, Missing Reels is an irresistible, alchemical mix of Nora Ephron and David Nicholls that will charm and delight.
acquainted with Norman. He was a lowly assistant trying to write features, so he interviewed Norman, and when he returned, they took it. Why, I can’t imagine. You heard the beginning and the whole thing’s like that. ‘In 1932 he met the great Ernst Lubitsch, then and now a byword for sophistication …’” “Park Avenue. In the seventies. Which Street exactly?” “Unfortunately, I overplayed my hand, because I asked the same thing and he started to get suspicious and wanted to know why I was asking
his back on the door and took his wine out of her hand. “Vinegar, and nuts.” “Not just nuts. Almonds.” “Lovely. Now we’re Miss Marple.” He pointed a finger at the ceiling. “Cyanide! The scent of bitter almonds!” “This time I know what I’m talking about, and you don’t. Almonds. That’s the smell of nitrate. And the vinegar is the smell of the safety film, getting old.” She took the glass out of his hand and drained it in one go. “Now we can go back upstairs and have that rational little chat.”
had to think about even the appearance of impropriety. And he said he understood of course, but still, ‘Frau Clare, I can’t tell whether your daughter is suitable if I can’t see how she is without her mama around.’ He was putting it to her plainly; she left us alone, or else. “She was stuck, and she left. He shut the door behind her and went back to sit on the desk. The only other time I was left alone with a director he’d asked to see my legs, and I’m sure I wasn’t looking very friendly. He
sat in the back. The room was about two-thirds full, maybe sixty or seventy people, and she had a vague impression of more suits, more velvet, little cocktail hats with veils and bows and feathers—where were these dames when she was trying to sell hats at Vintage Visions? Gene walked to the front of the screen. “Good evening, and welcome to the monthly screening of the New York chapter of the Bangville Police Society. My name is Gene Washington, and I’m the president.” Gene could project like
before she could say anything else. “Listen, would it kill you if we switched movies tonight? I know it’s Walsh, but I’m dying for color. What about Angel Heart? You could at least try to keep up with what’s new.” “Matthew …” “Christ, when was the last time you saw something made after Eisenhower was president? And before you answer, that one about the MGM musicals doesn’t count.” “I can’t—” “Neither does The Men Who Made the Movies.” “I can’t make it tonight.” “What?” The word was midway