Venus Blue (2ND)

Venus Blue is a novel in pursuit of its own subject: a 1930s bush pilot and 'gorgeous vagabond' named Molly Lamanna. As the focal point of an intense devotion, Molly, nonetheless, defies description: the closer one gets, the more ambivalent she becomes. Discovered by Hollywood at the edge of an airstrip in the Mojave desert, she manages to elude not only those about her, but - as both amnesiac and pilot prone to long, self-absolving flights up the Californian coastline - herself as well. Set in film-noir chiaroscuro, the novel is narrated by a present-day Hollywood memorabilia collector, Stefan Hollander. Something in the enticing vacuity of Molly's aspect as she flickers across a late-night television screen arrests his attention. Soon after, he comes to possess a journal, a kind of confessional, bound in flamboyant sapphire, kept by the one who most avidly worshipped at Molly's shrine: Millicent Rappaport, herself a Hollywood beauty. Of all the veneration Molly would incite in the various broken or obliterated segments of her life, Millicent's alone would come closest to capturing the spirit, if not the heart, of this glorious escapee.