A Glimpse of Stocking: A Glimpse of Stocking

by Elizabeth Gage

Book Overview

Annie Havilland is Hollywood's rising young superstar. Christine is New York's highest-paid call girl. Without knowing it, the two astonishingly beautiful young women are sisters--locked in a twisted web of deceit and ambition shaped by their cruel mother One of the summer's steamiest books.--USA Today.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671677241
• ISBN13: 9780671677244
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 708 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Underground

5.0 out of 5 stars Underground, July 24, 2010 By Doreen Appleton (Scottsdale, Arizona) - See all my reviews This review is from: Intimate: A Novel (Paperback) Simon & Schuster did not want Elizabeth Gage. Joni Evans, then the wife of Dick Snyder (who later ran Little Golden Books into the ground, as was reported by Publishers Weekly many times), rejected the book on behalf of S & S. Bill Grose, the head of Pocket Books, somehow got around her, and S & S exercised its topping privilege to win Jay Garon's auction and acquire A GLIMPSE OF STOCKING for $511,500. Garon's contract was a good one: the author retained all rights except North American. With foreign sales, the earnings reached $1.4 million. S & S didn't want Gage because they had Jackie Collins, that great talent, and Judith Michael, the nerdy husband-and-wife writing team. They were also offended that this first novelist from Glenview, Illinois, had so much more talent than their own authors. At a lunch at the Four Seasons Restaurant, Michael Korda and his then special friend Trish Lande tried to get Gage and her husband to change to a writing husband-and-wife team like Judith Michael. Gage and her husband refused. S & S walked out of the Four Seasons while the author was in the ladies' room. Later Korda tried to get Gage to take a lower royalty than the one specified in the contract. Gage refused.After six weeks of pressure. S & S caved. The editing, by a faceless group of editors, was finished, the book was ready to go to press, when Korda turned the script over to Lande, saying "See if you can find anything wrong with this." Lande covered the manuscript with coffee stains and cut out chapters which were crucial to the momentum of the book. In a long-distance conference call to Gage in Hawaii, Korda told her, "You have to make Trish's changes. You have to understand why it is so important that you surrender to us." Gage lectured Korda and Lande over the phone about Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby, which which Fitzgerald stops the action to simply give the names of the people who visited West Egg that summer. "My chapters are far more important to the movement of the story than Fitzgerald's Chapter 4." Chastened, furious, Korda said "I guess Trish and I should read those chapters again." In the end the chapters stayed. The book became a New York Times bestseller, But S & S did not forgive. They withdrew Gage's second novel, Pandora's Box, from the stores after one week "for lack of interest." Jay Garon, furious, moved Gage to Pocket Books, where she received big advances but zero promotion. As a result, Gage never became a brand name novelist, but her five novels for S & S/Pocket and her two books for Mira remain cult classics with avid fans around the world. Her unique combination of violence, sex, and psychological depth set her far above the Krantzes and Collinses and Bradfords of the writing world.

A FULL ENJOYMENT

A GLIMPSE OF STOCKING is a sexually charged roman à clef set in Hollywood. Reminiscent of any of Jackie Collins work, this one however (penned by a pseudonym) is far more superior with its rich prose, setting, character development and its non-stop action--a powerful combination that makes this 700+ page novel such a joy to read.-----Martin Boucher

WOW Holy cow!

The first time I picked up this book I was 18 and found it in a closet of my uncles house. I sat down and started to read, 5 hrs later I was still sitting there and reading the last chapter. This book has everything in it, sex, intrigue, romance, horrer, incest, there are moments that make you smile, and others that make you cry, all in all the charachters become real, you love when they love, hate when they hate, and get angry with them at all life's injustices.Once you start this book it is hard to put down. An in the end the ending will blow you away, it is shocking! I have owned several copies since then and in 9 yrs I still consider it one of my favorite books, one word for you if you buy this book,ENJOY!

Exciting, erotic, intelligent, merciless, sad, well written!

This is one of my favorite novels. I have owned several copies. It has everything. Romance, intriuge, an exotic and foreign way of living. Real but imaginary, and extraordinary characters and an ending so shocking to have left me breathless and in tears. I feel close to Christine, as if she were someone I knew, or someone I recognized in myself. I collect all of Ms. Gage's work now although I believe this to be her best work and unsurpassible in quality. I will never loan it out.

Intense

The plot is sensational. There are many turns and twists, yet in a way loosely gathered until the end that there is little doubt of the plausibility of the story. The book's most glorious attribute, however, is the happy yet tragic ending that somehow gives statement to the few lives it carefully traced through twenty and more years. Each character is dynamic, full of personality yet not entirely in the grasp of the reader. The sense of the enigmatic only enhanced the strength of the characters. They were cold in their ruthlessness, pitiable in their weakness, lovable in their humanness, and memorable because of their ability to stand erect from the experiences prescribed by the writer and come forth as individuals of complex natures. In the end the result is tragedy, or triumph that rises above the tarnishes of life and simply shows off its beauty. It leaves the reader with a sense of the regrettable and uncontrollable events of life as much a result of fate as our doing, and also a yearning to overcome it all and survive.