Like Venus Fading
A great rollercoaster rags-to-riches-to-rags tale about the first black Hollywood sex goddess.• Like Elvis, like Marilyn, the first black film superstar didn’t die tragically, but lives among us still, changed out of all recognition…• Propelled out of Depression-era poverty by the ambition of her mother and her own talents, young Irene O’Brien finds she attracts attention easily – both welcome (she is talent-spotted from Mississippi to Harlem to Hollywood) and unwelcome (at six, a fat, over-friendly storekeeper gets altogether too excited when she sits on his lap…)• She blazes a trail no other black performer has taken before and becomes an international sex symbol in the 1950s – ‘the black Monroe’• Fame and fortune come running: she is the first black woman to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. But happiness eludes her: her celebrity marriage never works; her daughter is autistic; and the studios soon tire of her as she ages• Her descent into drunkenness and derangement ends with her very mysterious ‘death’ in the mid-1960s at the age of forty-three. But, beaten but not bowed, Venus Johnson rises from the ashes of Irene O’Brien to tell her tale and live out her days in tranquillity…
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From the British reviews for Like Venus Fading:
‘A remarkable tale … This is a brilliantly written and intricately constructed novel by an author at the height of her powers. At times harrowing and at others wryly funny, it’s a story of emancipation and, above all, of hope. If there’s a lesson to be drawn from it, it’s that all of us, if we choose, can paint the stars.’
TIM HULSE
‘Marsha Hunt’s America, superbly described in Like Venus Fading, is urban, dangerous, unparochial. This tale of Irene O’Brien and her process of reinventing herself after a supposed overdose touches cleverly on many twentieth-century myths. The dark subtext is abuse, the gleaming theme survival.’
JANE HARDY, Sunday Times
‘Like Venus Fading covers a vast geographical and social landscape, from the deep South to northern California, and a turbulent period of American history. But this broad canvas does not obscure the more tightly-observed scenes … our interest in [Irene’s] fate determines whether we want to turn the page, and the writing is good enough to ensure that we do … a challenging, thought-provoking book.’
PENNY FOX, Glasgow Herald
‘A vivid, magnetic novel … a mix of the story of Marilyn Monroe and the perceptions of Alice Walker, in a gritty, readable style that gives us Hollywood and ethnic America from a unique angle. Marsha Hunt is not afraid to face the unfaceable.’
MICHELENE WANDOR, Ham & High
‘Gripping, poignant and brilliantly written … Marsha Hunt is hailed by critics as a writer at the height of her powers and here that praise is completely justified.’
JENNY PARKIN, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
From the Irish Reviews:
‘A tautly written page-turner, Like Venus Fading tells the story of Irene O’Brien, a child from the slums of 1920s New Jersey who becomes America’s first black screen goddess, but at a terrible cost.’
LIAM FAY, Sunday Times
‘A powerful, horrifying story … But the tale is so sweetly told it seduces the reader into paying full attention to the subtleties of its flavour.’
DJINN GALLAGHER, Sunday Independent
‘A vividly written tale of abuse, identity, endurance and resurrection.’
DONAL O’DONOGHUE, RTE Guide
‘Hunt is a breathtaking writer and her story of Irene O’Brien, a poor little black girl from the South who finds triumph and tragedy in Hollywood, is stunningly well told … a wonderfully vivid, imaginative, memorable book.’
MADELEINE KEANE, Image
For Alan
Contents
‘And her joy was nearly like sorrow.’
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Los Angeles. 6 September 1965. Sweltering.
There’s a dull stench. I think it’s the garbage. But it’s me.
The sun feels hot. Is it afternoon? No birds sing.
Why can I hear but not see?
The two ambulance men mistake me for dead.
The one popping chewing gum jabs my right nipple. ‘This can’t be the Irene O’Brien,’ he says. ‘Irene’s got bigger titties.’
I try to scream but nothing comes out.
The gum chewer coughs. ‘Wouldn’t no movie star be livin’ here.’
Tell me about it. Thanks to bankruptcy, my puny, one-bedroom apartment was on the wrong side of Sunset.
‘Let’s dump her at the hospital and drop by the Fat Burger.’
‘This here’s a morgue job,’ says the one with the deep voice.
‘Where’s the body bag?’
‘You left it downstairs. Throw a sheet over her. Fuck rules.’
I imagine that I am lying face up. But a newspaper picture I later saw showed me curled on my side on the kitchen floor. Stark naked. Which had never been my style. I always sleep in nightgowns and had put one on the night of 5 September before crawling into bed with a nightcap.
The gum chewer says, ‘Spooky that her hair’s all over the floor.’
I try to scream again but can’t get my lips to move.
‘Irene O’Brien. She was a credit to the race till she started fucking honkies.’
‘Shit … you ain’t had nothing but white pussy since I known you. Grab the stretcher.’
‘Stub out that cigarette,’ says the deep voice. ‘You droppin’ ashes on her head.’
As they lift my body, a siren blares with the sound getting closer until it halts abruptly outside my building.
The gum chewer says, ‘Check the window. Ain’t no coincidence that two ambulances get called out to the same corner at the same time.’
‘Betcha Claudeen at the office double-booked again. See her butt in that tight skirt today? She can call out ten ambulances.’
Suddenly from down in the street there is loud raucous laughter. The gum chewer says, ‘That’s Bobby Lee out there clowning. Don’t nobody else laugh that loud… He’s on duty with tired-ass Charlie Adams.’
