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Etta (2009)

by Gerald Kolpan(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0345503686 (ISBN13: 9780345503688)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Ballantine Books

review 1: (Audio book version) This is one of those books that started out pretty good, then just got worse and worse, until I finally just hated it and couldn't wait for it to end. It's a fictionalized story of Etta Place, the paramour of the Sundance Kid. Not much is known about her. So the author, with apparently not much research, just made up a story about her.Now, to me, "historical fiction" is basically one of two things:1. A story about a fictional person who lives during a historic time, or2. A true story about a real person in history whose life is mostly known, and the the author extrapolates plausible events, relationships and conversations that the person might have had. In other words, it should be at least mostly believable.This book wasn't even CLOSE. Some of the eve... morents, like a nearly-lesbian relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt and scenes in bath houses (I think the author has some kind of perverted fantasy about naked women touching each other) were so far-fetched that I looked up an interview with the author, who basically said that since not much is known about Etta, he felt free to just make up whatever he felt like writing. The whole story was ludicrous. The characters are flat and unbelievable. What started out really well just turned into a complete shambles. Ugh.
review 2: Inventive and imaginative historical fiction. Etta Place--sweetheart of the Sundance Kid--doesn't have much of a bona fide biography, so Kolpan invents one and seems to have had a great time doing so. Nasty outlaws, honorable cowboys, Pinkerton detectives, scary Mafioso precursors and a dizzying variety of historical figures (Buffalo Bill to Trotsky) cartwheel through the book--and it all works. A fun summer read. less

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