Glen David Gold Sunnyside

-- Library Journal, 04/29/2009

. Gold, Glen David. Sunnyside. Knopf. May 2009. c.576p. ISBN 978-0-307-27068-9. $26.95. F

Charlie Chaplin has just been sighted: he's afloat on a skiff off the Northern California shore, without oars or sail and drifting onto the rocks. Before rescue arrives, his boat sinks. A battered black derby floats, alone, on top of turbulent waters. But at the exact same time, he's seen all across America in hundreds of places. Thus begins a three-year roller-coaster ride through an America coming to grips with a war many wished we'd never gotten into and the attraction of a new and revolutionary phenomenon: the movies with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and…Charlie Chaplin, whose efforts to realize his destiny are the center of this fantastic farrago of a novel, which weaves from character to character and always returns to Chaplin. He's unfaithful, lecherous, and a bad son, but he has a genius for visual comedy that cries out to be realized. Gold (Carter Beats the Devil) has written another joyous comic novel that blends fact and fiction to the point where you won't really care what's true and what's not. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/09.]—David Keymer, Modesto, CA

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