Book Review
Bandbox

By Thomas Mallon
Reviewed by Julie Monroe
from the April 2004 Newsletter

“Cuddles Houlihan got clipped by the vodka bottle as it exited the pneumatic tube.”

So begins Bandbox, the latest novel by Thomas Mallon, author of Two Moons and Mrs. Paine’s Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy. With his delightful first sentence, Mallon accomplishes something rare: a reading experience that is pure, unadulterated fun, a grand entertainment that is witty, charming, and, I’ll say it again, just plain fun.

Bandbox is a monthly men’s magazine that had managed to combine fashion, finance, and crime with much success until an upstart periodical called Cutaway started sinking its teeth into its circulation. Set in 1928 in Manhattan, Bandbox, the novel, is the story of how the staff of Bandbox, the magazine, rises to the challenge of getting their collective feet one up on the competition.

Bandbox is the Jazz Age as filtered through the lens of a motion picture camera, and it is so cinematic that I’d like to meet the reader who isn’t compelled to cast its characters as they go through plots developments worthy of the best screwball comedies of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Thomas Mallon is one of my favorite novelists, and although most of his work is fiction, I, nonetheless, regard him as a superior historian for his skill in depicting characters authentic to their historical era. Yet, with Bandbox, Mallon creates a world peopled with characters that seem larger-than-life, with names like Jehoshaphat Harris, Nan O’Grady, Max Stanwick, and Daisy DiDonna. In doing so, Mallon has not simply exploited the Jazz Age for its entertainment value but given us a genuine portrayal of an era that, like the magazine Bandbox, somehow managed to combine optimism and cynicism in pursuit of the American dream.

Bandbox is available from Book People and at the University of Idaho Library.

Julie Monroe loves fiction.

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