San Remo Drive: A Novel from Memory

"One of the four best Hollywood novels ever written."Elizabeth Frank, The New York Times Book Review

Leslie Epstein's best-selling novel is composed of five interrelated episodes, each elaborated from a germ of childhood experience by the mature imagination of a distinguished writer of fiction. Richard Jacobi, the narrator of these reflections, invites us to revisit the crucial experiences of his youth: driving to Malibu to meet the man determined to marry his mother; on vacation in the Mohave, while his father, the famed Hollywood figure Norman Jacobi, and Lotte, his mother, must deal with the terrible consequences of Norman's testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; exploring how a night in a bar and brothel in Tijuana becomes linked to the spiritual growth of his brother, Bartie; viewing a precarious initiation into sexuality that will mark forever the way an artist sees the world and does his work.

The Jacobi family of the 1950s, however, is only part of this novel. A half century later, Richard has moved back to the same house on San Remo Drive where he spent his adolescence. Naturally, he seeks to re-create that past of sunshine and lemon groves and innocence, of 78 rpm records, artistic freedom, and all the "early sorrows and many joys" before his family's tragic dissolution. But perhaps the greater task for the adult Richard is simply to lead a decent life, now that he is a famous painter and head of a new family that is about to face an inescapable tragedy of its own.