A quest to capture the elusive essence of Greta Garbo's beauty sends a dying screenwriter off to Europe in Sobin's latest (after The Fly-Truffler), which begins when Hollywood writer Philip Nilson outlives a dire cancer prognosis and then manages to talk his producer friend into signing him up to write a screenplay about the mysterious film icon. Nilson finds enough research material to fill out the structural framework, but he remains haunted by his inability to formulate a scene that transforms Garbo from an ordinary working-class girl into a film goddess. His search eventually lands him in the French Alps, where he tracks down the lighting technician who helped showcase Garbo's unique sex appeal. That interview helps him understand her transformation into "that divine, profoundly dissociative creature," which happened while she was on location in Constantinople for an ill-fated film. As he continues his research, Nilson realizes that his obsession with Garbo is rooted in his obsession with an "ideal" woman, a figure most closely resembling his mother and his half-sister, with whom he almost had an affair. Sobin, also an accomplished poet, writes elegantly about Garbo's magic while tracing the time line of her career, and he manages to convey the screenwriter's effort to capture her essence. But the book's brevity makes the story seem episodic and incomplete, leaving readers to wonder what might have been if he'd used his format as a vehicle to explore Garbo's fascinating career. Instead, he provides plenty of fodder to fuel her mysterious legacy, leaving us with an ode to beauty that explores the link between our romantic preferences and the icons on the silver screen. Agent, Sabine Hrechdakian. (Jan.)
