Brigid Brophy

Essays on censorship, celebrities, writers, and books.

It was one thing to select pillows for America's number-one movie heart-throb -- and quite another to fall asleep while trying them out! Paige Cummingham blushed when her client Kellen Davis discovered his decorator in such a compromising position, but the handsome actor did his best to banish her embarrassment. — Paige had declared herself unsusceptible to the man whose blue eyes made millions of women swoon, but she couldn't deny the sensual longing his nearness aroused in her. Kellen's love life was a creation of the gossip columns, designed to fuel the macho fantasy his roles demanded, but he'd never yearned for a woman in his life beyond the cameras -- until Paige made him dream those sweet dreams....

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,” brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation.