Sarah McCoy's charming seventh novel, Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely?, combines a lush, compelling story of young love and Hollywood glamour with a quiet, nourishing narrative of a woman who found her true vocation thousands of miles from stardom. McCoy (Mustique Island; The Mapmaker's Children) explores the motivations that led a rising young starlet to abandon her career for a lifetime tending gardens--and her own soul--in the woods of Connecticut. Inspired by several real-life actresses turned nuns, including Mother Dolores Hart, McCoy's novel asks important questions about one's calling, love, and whose opinion really matters.
In 1990, Lori Lovely's niece and namesake, Lu, travels to the abbey where Lori lives to interview her aunt about her abrupt career change and her life as a nun. McCoy intersperses their conversations with flashbacks to Lori's childhood in small-town North Carolina, her eventual move to New York City to work in her sister's photography shop, and her lucky break auditioning for a musical film, which leads to her brief movie career. She chronicles the young ingenue's transformation from Lucille Hickey to Lori Lovely, and her breakout role as Juliet opposite heartthrob Lucas Wesley. Though she loves acting, Lori is inexperienced and naive, unprepared for the rigors of life on set or the sharks that are circling, waiting to devour innocent young women like her. Lucas's tragic death and its circumstances prompt Lori to flee to the abbey, where she eventually decides to establish her life.
McCoy creates a thoroughly detailed mid-century world, as Lori goes out dancing at London nightclubs or shoots Juliet's scenes in an Italian villa. In the later Hollywood scenes, the movie glitter is mixed with a hefty dose of darkness, a sharp contrast to the eventual peace of the convent and its bucolic setting. McCoy dwells less on Lori's spiritual journey and ethereal connection to God than her mental and emotional state, and her firm belief that the rhythms of the abbey would help anchor her, as they had done for so many people.
As Lu presses her aunt for answers about her life, she unearths a few hard-won insights about her own--both her past and her uncertain post-college future. Meanwhile, Lori reflects on the events that propelled her from California to Connecticut, and the choices--large and small--that made her the woman she eventually became. Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely? draws the reader in with an unlikely gown-to-habit costume change, but its true appeal is in its quiet contemplation of choices, challenges, and how they shape a person's life. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Sarah McCoy's charming seventh novel combines a Hollywood story of glamour and young love with a quiet narrative of a woman who found peace far from the movies' glitter and grit.