July 7, 2013 By
The Diamond Lane: A Novel
Author: Karen Karbo
"A wonderfully comic novel about savvy Hollywood outsiders trying to get in... not only is the plot ingenious, but the writing remains deft all the way through."
-The New York Times
Reluctantly back home in L.A. after 16 years in Africa, documentary filmmaker Mouse FitzHenry longs for the harsh, teeming jungle life her dark lens took in so lovingly. Wrenched stateside by a family emergency, with her longtime boyfriend/collaborator in tow, Mouse is instantly beleaguered by a past she'd leapt continents to escape and a present she can only face armed by reels of celluloid. In this rollicking second novel, Karbo ( Trespassers Welcome Here ) reveals familiar subjects–the phony glitz of Hollywood, the fairy-tale lure of love and marriage–with precision, compassion and humor as if we are seeing them for the very first time. Mouse's paramour Tony, a Brit who calls her "poppet," adores L.A. and all that it can do for him and for his screenplay, Love Among the Elephants . "Based on a true story" about their courtship in Africa, the script has been given the go-ahead by a producer who insists on dubbing it Love Among Gorillas. Mouse, meanwhile, caving in to maternal pressure, agrees to marry Tony and then proceeds, with the help of an old flame, to film around her unwitting fiance a documentary on the entire process of their betrothal called Wedding March. A flawless, page-turning story emerges as Mouse and Tony manage–often with hilarious subterfuge–to keep their projects secret from one another. With its laugh-aloud moments and a cast of brilliantly drawn characters, this is a tale to treasure.
Karen Karbo's first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, were also named New York Times Notable Books.
Karbo's 2004 memoir, The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics' Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Non-fiction.
Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award.
Karbo is most well known for her best-selling Kick Ass Women series, the most recent of which is How Georgia Became O'Keeffe, published in 2011. How to Hepburn, published in 2007, was hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "an exuberant celebration of a great original"; #1 ebook best-seller The Gospel According to Coco Chanel appeared in 2009. Next up: Julia Child Rules, which will appear in October 2013.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
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