Product Description

A tale based on the life of Hollywood's first black sex goddess. Rising to the ranks of "the black Monroe" and receiving an Oscar nomination, Irene then descends into drunkenness and derangement. After her mysterious "death", she rises from the ashes to live out her days in tranquility.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1847899 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Irene Matthews is born into an impoverished and abused childhood in the Depression-hit Harlem of the 1920s. Poor and uneducated, inspired by the atmosphere of the Harlem Renaissance and the blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Irene dreams--but dares not hope--of becoming a showgirl. Aspirant grit and extraordinary circumstances combine, and Hollywood manufactures her dream through the decisive force of producer Samuel Gottlieb. She is reborn Irene O'Brien, sex symbol, Oscar-nominated movie star, and groundbreaking phenomenon, shattering the moulds of both the Black Mammie and White Bubble Gum Venus.

Marsha Hunt's Like Venus Fading brilliantly depicts Irene's luminary ascent to--and harrowing descent from--fame. The novel movingly and incisively shows how Irene becomes a victim of the nightmare of Hollywood's inhumanity, and its racial anxieties and sexual fascination with black femininity (the real life Adelaide Hall, known as the "lightly-tanned Venus", and the legendary Josephine Baker, are near at hand as compound models for Hunt's fictional memoir). Irene revels in the apparent security of material wealth ("Pretty shoes always helped me look other people in the eye"), but finds that the price of her success is the burden of the intensely erotic image projected onto her exoticised body.

Destroyed as a black star and a victim of her times, Irene remakes an anonymous identity under the stars on the roof of a young--and unlikely--saviour who challenges her with a new language of race consciousness and enables her to confront the final reality that "nobody knows us like we know ourselves." Hunt's study of fame and its costs is an utterly enthralling--and painfully well written--story, which exposes the ways in which racial myths continue to shape the perceptions of 20th-century America. --Rachel Holmes

Review
Reviews of Repossessing Ernestine 'An amazing story, full of twists and turns, Dickensian coincidences and discoveries ... Repossessing Ernestine moves the reader to anger but should remind most people of what being human and humane is really about' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'No anger over the wrongs of the past could be as eloquent as this cool truth-telling. Let this book get a grip on you - you won't regret it' Jill Paton Walsh, Sunday Express 'I was moved to tears' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

Customer Reviews

Don't expect Maya Angelou's brilliance.
I read Marsha's story with excitement and anticipation but found myself trying to piece together a world of disjointed drug-induced stupours,family discord and missed opportunities; right up until the last page. Marsha is a fine actress and I admire her effort, but this is not,however, written with the same deftness of pen as that of some of her forebears.

Marsha Hunt's exceptional story of a womans' salvation
The demise of a fading would be Hollywood star is the focus of Marsha Hunt's enthralling novel,Like Venus Fading. The novel spans the harrowing life of Irene Matthews. Born into an impoverished Black American family,deprived of love and neglected by her mother, she desperately clings to all forms of hope to escape from her depressing and abusive surroundings. To be uneducated,poor,black and female in 1920's America was hard,but harder still for anyone with hopes of fame, and success in the not so welcoming arms of white Hollywood, but not for Irene. A determined dreamer we follow Irene from the poverty of Harlem to the fame filled but false and deceptive world of Hollywood, where her talent and beauty catapult her to success, but her pride and dignity are sacrificed in exchange.

Irene's last grasp of fame and consequent denial of her past life, comes in the act of re-naming herself, Irene O'Brien. She is now re-born,her past life a bitter memory,fame and glory welcome her, but age and time are waiting around the corner to destroy her. But it is only when Irene hits rock bottom that she is given one last chance to re-invent herself, one last time. From the depths of acute depression, she re-surfaces to long awaited anonymity and to the acceptance of herself, it is her long awaited salvation.

Marsha Hunt paints a vivid portrayal of a woman who bitterly denies her past life to fulfil her dreams and then subsides into the awful reality that who she is really trying to escape from is herself. Harrowing and at times sad, this book is a well crafted observation of a womans' salvation from a victimised and sexualised object of desire in soul destroying Hollywood, to a woman who bravely finds love, tranquility, dignity and herself.

Through all the tragedy and misery of Irene Matthews life, what does prevail is the underlying feeling of optimism, spiritual awakening and hope. Marsha Hunt brilliantly depicts all the pitfalls of fame and the demise of its not so fortunate victims, with intimate observations and a style that exudes eloquence. An extraordinary novel from an exceptionally gifted writer.

Maxine Edwards