Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe
Published by Nan A. Talese
Publication date: July 9, 2019
Genres: Debut, Fiction, Historical, Literary
The premise for Delayed Rays of a Star is one I love. In 1928 young photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took a photo of three women at a party in Berlin (see below). One of them, Anna May Wong, was already famous as a Hollywood actress, but the other two, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl had yet to achieve celebrity. Author Amanda Lee Koe takes this one photograph and spins it into a tale of each woman’s life after the photo and how their lives exploded outward, but continued to intersect.
Koe mines historical details for Delayed Rays of a Star, with Wong as the novel’s linchpin. She was rumored to have had a relationship with Dietrich and to have been close friends with Riefenstahl before WWII. The affair with Dietrich runs throughout the novel, but Riefenstahl’s connection to the two is gone after 1928, which is a bit confusing. Instead, she stands on her own, either directing her final movie or dealing with the inevitable backlash from her choices.
Koe mines historical details for Delayed Rays of a Star, with Wong as the novel’s linchpin. She was rumored to have had a relationship with Dietrich and to have been close friends with Riefenstahl before WWII. The affair with Dietrich runs throughout the novel, but Riefenstahl’s connection to the two is gone after 1928, which is a bit confusing. Instead, she stands on her own, either directing her final movie or dealing with the inevitable backlash from her choices.
The insight into Marlene, Anna May, and Leni is fascinating, especially in the hurdles each faced throughout their lives—either for their race, their talent, or as a woman. Both Dietrich and Riefenstahl found success and acclaim thanks to powerful men, but as that power disappeared Dietrich’s career stalled and Riefenstahl became an international outcast. Wong was relegated to smaller roles that reinforced ethnic stereotypes of the times. She was never the lead in any movie and was even denied the chance to play a chance to play a Chinese woman in The Good Earth. The part went to a white woman. When Wong went to China to visit she was derided for being too American and not knowing how to fluently speak Mandarin.
Riefenstahl is the most difficult character to connect with because it is almost impossible to set aside judgment of her choices. Koe doesn’t work very hard to make her sympathetic—she comes off with an extreme superiority complex and a petty, narcissistic nature. None of which made me interested in reading her unending justifications and rationalization for her life’s work and involvement with the Nazis.
On Monday I reviewed a book in which every character was critical, but despite understanding that Delayed Rays of a Star is about the ripple effect of three famous women, I couldn’t feel the same about the people who popped up in the novel. There was Marlene’s Chinese maid and an anonymous young man who called her in her last days. In Leni’s life there was a crew member from her last film set. These three had protracted stories that partially intertwined but ultimately led nowhere. It meant that while Koe’s writing was nimble the story lacked the cohesion to keep my attention. It splintered into pieces that sputtered to an end.
Love that you found and included the photo, but I think I’ll skip this one. Thanks for vetting it.
It didn’t go the way I thought it would. She clearly shows how each suffered as a woman of her times, but the rest was a bit muddled.
I love that picture! Thanks for sharing. It’s a great premise, but it sounds like it doesn’t quite deliver.
Not really. I appreciated the 3 lives, but the side trips into the other characters just didn’t add up.
Seemed like a good idea for a book, but it ended up being an author in search of a story that never really came together.
Yes! In this case, the picture was worth a thousand words, but the novel was not.