Reviews - The Seventh Veil of Salome

1.67k reviews for:

The Seventh Veil of Salome

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

3.95 AVERAGE

efredericks's review against another edition

3.75

emotional tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

screechie's review against another edition

3.5

I was invested until the
last five chapters and then I just couldn’t pay attention. I had to listen to the ending a few times because I fell asleep, and it wasn’t because I was tired. I can’t pinpoint it right now, something about the writing shifted, I zonked out.

ayoungreads's review against another edition

2.0

sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kahuggs's review against another edition

4.0

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is back, this time with an old Hollywood Biblical epic drama that traces the mythmaking around the infamous story of Salome through the fraught production of a major old Hollywood film and the cutthroat nature of the studio system. The plot weaves together plot lines of the three women central to this epic story. First: Vera, a young Mexican ingenue plucked from obscurity to play the film's star. Vera finds herself thrust into the intrigue, glamor, and danger of the Hollywood spotlight. In her shadow: Nancy, an aspiring actress who has been trying to get her big Hollywood break for years, with only a few small roles and subsistence, seedy modeling gigs to show for it. She resents the ease with which stars like Vera are minted, while she lives a hardscrabble existence far from the life of glamor and success she believes should be rightfully hers.

These tensions and resentments mix with the racism and bigotries of the studio system, the Hayes Code, and the gossip media, which are narrated through oral history-style interviews and contemporaneous press excerpts as the story traces the film's development. Interspersed throughout is the story of Salome herself: her tenuous existence in Herod's court in the midst of political intrigue and on the cusp of civic unrest. These stories build to the film (and the Salome myth's) climactic scene: Salome's dance before Herod for a court celebration, and her request for a Jewish prophet's head on a platter.

I am once again impressed by Silvia Moreno-Garcia's dexterity as a writer, shifting into yet another genre. The scope of this book is especially ambitious. It's a rich and sumptuous book that truly feels like a larger than life Old Hollywood epic. I am intrigued by the layers of myth-making in the story: the mythos of an Old Hollywood film which gains notoriety for its offscreen melodrama and the mythic femme fatale who serves as the film's inspiration. It's richly layered and propulsively readable. The escalation to the climax is especially delicious.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.