Thanks for this excellent breakdown of the book - I'm so glad I never have to read it, and get comedy gold like this insteadThank you so much for saying that, you didn't have to, so you were very kind to do so! Welcome back.
So I've gone and started a chapter by chapter summary of When The Curtain Falls. This is the prologue to Chapter Five. There are twenty-one chapters, so I'll do the rest down the line at some point if there is any interest. I've put each chapter summary in a spoiler to avoid clogging up the timeline for those who aren't interested. I put some general points for the whole book in the prologue, so if you're not going to read any of the rest of it, that one alone will give you the gist. You can see my will to live declining chapter by chapter as I get more angry with the book, hahaha. Honestly, go and read Carrie's first two books, they're better, I promise.
In the prologue, we fittingly get an overture; the author waxes lyrical about the magic of theatre, and we are told that once a year at the Southern Cross Theatre, an old “stage door man” called Walter converses with the ghost of an actress through a mirror, before a vision of her onstage death is re-enacted. At the end of the prologue, Walter discovers via email that the production in which the actress (Fawn) died, “When The Curtain Falls”, is to be revived at the Southern Cross, sixty-six years later. Concerned, he asks Fawn to “play nice”, as she is in the habit of haunting and causing trouble backstage at the best of times. Walter then finds out who is playing Fawn’s role, Eliza, and says aloud to himself that new actress Olive Green might be sorry she ever agreed to the role.
There are good points to the prologue-it’s the book’s highlight. There is an admirable attempt at tension, which is very hard to write, and the mystery is fairly intriguing. Carrie’s passion for the theatre and storytelling definitely comes through, and I felt genuine sadness when Walter was ashamed of how old he had grown while ghostly Fawn is forever youthful, feeling he’d failed her.
However, small, easily addressable issues with Carrie’s writing begin to show from the start. The most prevalent is that all of her character sound the same-in short, they sound like Carrie. I’ve found this with all of her books (admittedly I’ve not read the latest two, so she might have improved)-every character sounds like Carrie in a different wig. It’s as if every single character in Friends said “How you doing?”. Her style of speaking, which is lovely coming from her-an articulate, slightly old-fashioned manner with plenty of metaphors, similes, and anecdotes-does not sound natural coming from every single character, regardless of background, personality, gender, and situation. Admittedly, there is an attempt at writing a different pattern of speech later for Toby, the stunt co-ordinator-he says things like “dunnit” (doesn’t it) and “bitta” (bit of), but that’s as far as it goes-it feels a bit cheap and forced, almost as if Toby himself is faking an accent like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins. All the characters simply have the same patterns and style of speaking (Carrie’s style) and it gets quite draining.
The other issue I find in the book as a whole that starts in the prologue is the unnatural, over-explanation. What I mean by that is unnatural dialogue being shoehorned in for the benefit of the audience to explain what’s going on instead of letting the audience discover things for ourselves. It’s almost as if some characters turn to the camera, like The Office, and say “This is this thing. It happens because of this thing. Got that? Good.” An excellent example of this happens in the prologue. In the email, straight after we see the ghostly re-enaction of the play’s climax and Fawn’s death, we are told that yes indeed “When The Curtain Falls” played at the Southern Cross before, and yes indeed, there was an accident, you got that? There was absolutely no need for the explanation-any child could have figured out the connection. Carrie would have done much better to have provided a shorter email saying that the revival is happening, and to let Walter’s reaction speak for itself. I know books need a certain degree of exposition, but if Carrie’s books were a little more subtle, they would be a hundred times better. There are countless examples of this through the book, and it’s a shame, because they really break your immersion into the world of the story.
Just two more quick points before I move on-I wanted to mention Walter speaking aloud to himself at the end of the prologue when Olive Green is named for the first time. Obviously the writer wanted to get Olive introduced in a dramatic way, but Walter isn’t the only character to talk aloud to himself about Olive when alone, and it is so unnatural. It could easily have been presented as thoughts in their heads, but no, they talk aloud to no one for the benefit of an invisible audience, and it’s very jarring. If I knew them, I’d be concerned for their wellbeing.
Lastly, I wanted to mention the nouns. Carrie has a habit of naming her characters and places in her books sickly sweet names, which is her prerogative, but honestly the naming in this novel for some reason annoyed me more than the others. The Southern Cross Theatre?! I seriously invite you to google the names of London theatres now, and see that, if the Southern Cross was real, one of these things would not be like the others. The only way I can make it work logically is if Carrie had invented a fictional place in London called Southern Cross, and the theatre was named after the location, but I don’t think we ever get such an explanation. Especially as the theatre is specifically on Shaftsbury Avenue. I wondered if it might mean “cross” as an allusion to a headstone shaped like a cross, because the theatre is haunted? But that’s the best I can do. Additionally in the prologue, the production company putting on “When The Curtain Falls” is called “Toastie Productions”. Toastie Productions?! I know production companies be naming themselves dumb things, but the only explanation I can think of for this is that Carrie must have been eating a toastie at the time. Again, this is a constant through the novel.
Chapter One-Enjoy
Prior to Chapter One, we get an entire page of a poster advertising “When The Curtain Falls” at the Southern Cross. Nothing wrong with this, it’s a good way to get exposition across, but it renders Walter’s email in the previous chapter, which gave details about the production including dates and times, even more redundant. I don’t mind that the production is by a “C.H. Fletcher”, I found it humorous, but make what you will of that. The issue I have with the poster is that Olive Green’s name is listed above Oscar Bright’s. Now, Oscar is the famous one, as we find out in Chapter Two, and presumably he’s the name putting butts on seats, so why is Olive’s name first? It isn’t even alphabetical. I don’t know if there’s some kind of theatre tradition where the leading lady is named first, but it just seems weird to me.
Oscar has “short black hair” and a “big toothy smile” so I’ll leave you to wonder who he might be inspired by. He and Olive are carrying out an illicit, secret affair, meeting at the “crack of dawn” (8:55) to avoid the prying eyes of the press and the rumour mill of the West End. Olive is concerned that Oscar is embarrassed to be with her, but he insists he isn’t, and that he’s just trying to avoid the press after a public breakup with a high-profile girlfriend called Zadie. If you ask me, that’s a Strallen name (Zizi, Scarlett, Summer, Sasi…you wouldn’t blink if Zadie was there too). In case you didn’t know, Oscar-I mean Oliver’s-ex is Summer. Anyway, you get the picture. Next, we’re treated to a LONG, and I mean long, monologue from the narrator, exalting Olive’s virtues which she never displays herself. It’s textbook telling, not showing. It’s all about how Olive is a lovely, special person whose career started with immediate ***leading-role*** success straight after drama school, and her only flaw is letting people take advantage of her. That’s a very Mary Sue kind of flaw, and not really a flaw in her but in everyone around her. At one point, someone tells her not to set herself on fire to keep others warm, which I’m sure Carrie has shared on Instagram before. If this is true, you can kind of see why Olive would be worried that Oscar might be taking advantage of her too, but this could have all been laid out much more gradually and subtly. They have breakfast together, and the world and their wife fancy Oscar, but he likes Olive because she’s so different to everyone else-she treats him like a human, because he is one. Revolutionary.
Remember how we got a long, awkward monologue introducing Olive? Round Two Electric Boogaloo for Oscar. He’s basically a soap star who quit to go onto bigger and better things, and lo and behold, it didn’t work out. I quite like this, actually-it feels realistic, and it brings him down a peg, which makes him easier to warm to. We delve into the past where Olive and Oscar first meet, along with the rest of the new cast for WTCF. Tamara, a girl in the ensemble with her eyes on Oscar, asks him who in the cast he would sleep with if held at gunpoint, which I might have suggested was foreshadowing (the weapon in the play is a gun) in any other book. I don’t think he gives a straight answer, but it’s an opportunity for Tamara and Jane (Olive’s first cover) to openly flirt with him. Meanwhile, for some unknown reason, Doug (Olive’s friend who lives to praise her) starts dancing with Olive, and whispers that he thinks Oscar fancies her. The cast then talks about theatre ghosts, and how every theatre has one, with varying degrees of scepticism, but the general consensus is that a wise actor (like Olive, obvs) is wary of theatre ghosts because if you piss them off they can make your life hell. Just as another general point, Olive estimates that they have “four to six minutes” before the director tells them off for chatting. A writer should never be that specific, it sounds dumb. Just say five minutes.
Anyway, the cast go out to a club, and Olive doesn’t want to be there because she’s too deep and cool for clubbing. The bartender happens to recognise her, by the way, because of course he does, her being the most special person ever to have lived, and gives her a free drink. Olive looks down on Jane and Tamara for pole dancing (sounds like fun!) and wearing “slinky dresses and high heels”, which she herself would never wear. So Olive and Oscar ditch the club and go back to Oscar’s flat. Oscar calls her “Miss Green” a lot, which made me cringe, tbh, it’s that weird, old-fashioned tone all the characters have. They make out, and honestly I skipped over most of description of these two eels thrashing around. I’m not a prude, just gay and tired of these idiots.
So the very first line of this chapter announces that Olive managed to buy a flat in London at twenty-two, which she complains about the size of sometimes, so others have to remind her how lucky she is to have it. I’m not going to say this was probably inspired by real events, make your own decisions. Olive has a little chat with herself in the kitchen, OUT LOUD, as I mentioned in the general points. It’s so jarring when she wonders “Does he like me?” etc aloud, when it could so easily be presented as thoughts in her head. Meanwhile, over in Bow, OSCAR IS DOING THE SAME THING. Sitting around alone, talking to himself “Olive Green…is there anything this girl can’t do?” He actually says that. I’ve never sat around talking aloud to myself. Maybe I’m the weird one after all.
So this is the chapter with the infamous coffee scene, where Olive, Oscar, and Jane go to grab coffee and Olive looks down on Jane, her first cover, for ordering some iced peppermint mocha frap. Granted it sounds pretty gross, but girl, you live your life and drink whatever you want. But this scene is so much more contrived than that. While Jane is in the loo, Oscar and Olive have a brief chat and again fail to define their relationship. I do think Oscar is being a bit annoying at this point, not wanting to give Olive a label so that if he wants to jump ship she can’t complain, but we’ve had so many of these will they/won’t they scenes already. In another contrived move, Oscar then goes to the loo, leaving Jane the perfect opportunity to be one-dimensionally bitchy to poor old flat-owning, lead-landing Olive. Jane bitches that Oscar blew Olive a kiss and that Tamara is going to be “furious with you…making him blow you kisses”. She is such a cartoon villain, none of her dialogue is natural, and I actually feel quite sorry for her to be honest. And its Olive that makes me feel that way about the person we’re supposed to take her side over. Olive is so condescending towards her, treating her like a naughty child-she directly calls her childish in a previous chapter. Is it any wonder that Jane doesn’t like her? Granted Jane expecting Olive to pay for her drink is very presumptive and rude, but honestly, I don’t know a single person who would expect someone they’ve just met to pay for their expensive coffee order. Maybe I know disproportionally decent people, who knows. But the whole scene doesn’t happen organically and feels forced and contrived.
Later in the chapter, for the first time, Oscar really pisses me off, telling Olive that they were right to be rude to Jane because “she’s young and never going to learn she can’t always get what she wants if people don’t teach her.” It’s SO PATRONISING. Urgh. That’s my verdict on this chapter: Urgh.
Oscar says he chooses Olive, while still being a commitment-phobe, and Olive references Pokemon in a very Carrie way.
Oscar gets acquainted with his onstage gun, and forcedly working-class Toby the stunt co-ordinator (Dick van Dyke guy I mentioned in the general points) gives him a run-down of the ghost story. Honestly, the way Toby calls the director “big boss man” really put the ick in me for some reason. This is yet another explanation of the story that was laid out pretty plainly for us in the prologue, and it’s fairly unnecessary. Fawn Burrows was shot sixty-odd years ago because some idiots used a real gun during a production of WTCF-we get it. It’s hinted that it might not have been an accident-we know.
A mercifully short chapter ends with a comment about guns looking safe when they’re not in the hands of fools. I think it’s supposed to be profound, but I would argue that guns always look FREAKING TERRIFYING. Maybe because in my country there is strict control so I haven’t ever actually seen one in the flesh, but I think they look very sinister. Anyway, I’m not here to get political, I’m here to summarise.
The show is almost upon us. Tamara and Jane are bitchy to another dancer called Sam because she’s a little bigger than them. Carrie actually describes her pretty nicely, “thick thighs and strong arms…the way she moved was second to none”, but obviously not-skinny Sam isn’t perceived as a threat by Olive, so we’re allowed to like her. But obviously cartoon villains J and T call her a whale, so Sam shows herself to be yet another Carrie with another wig, doing an over-the-top gotcha! comeback which feels like the kind of thing you think of later and wish you’d have said at the time. It’s a bit of wish-fulfilment, I think.
Anyway, Oscar says “leave the girls to it, if they want to fight, let them fight without encouragement from us (the guys)”. Which just feels patronising again with a little sexism thrown in on top! I’m starting to really hate Oscar and his sanctimonious displays. He and Olive deserve each other.
The technical rehearsal gets underway, and it’s stressful because I hear they always are. The cast are quite convincingly worried that they won’t be ready to open in time, which I can imagine would be the case for many shows. I enjoyed the image of the stressed director pulling his hair in all directions-me doing my degree, lol.
But then, we get an extract of the play script itself. I’m not sure why Carrie included it, but fair dos, it’s basically creating more work for herself, so fair enough. Unfortunately, there is no change of tone between the novel and the script-they feel as if they’re being written by the same person. I’ve not read many scripts in my time, but from memories of studying them at school, I don’t think stage directions tend to last more than a page?? There’s more than an ENTIRE PAGE of stage directions alone-really specific stage directions at that. I think this is Carrie helping us as readers to understand exactly what would happen if we were watching the play, but we’re supposed to be just reading the script. Carrie should have taken a break from the script after the dialogue, described what the actors were doing onstage as a narrator, then gone back into the dialogue of the play.
Olive meets Walter. He is friendly, if a little odd. However, when Olive goes back to the stage, he does my FAVOURITE THING in this book and TALKS ALOUD TO HIMSELF. He basically shakes his fist at the sky and moans “Why did they have to cast someone who looks so much like Fawn!” Just to drive the parallel home even more.
Olive and Oscar make plans to see each other, but Olive is adamant that it can’t just be about sex, which is fair, tbh, if that’s what she wants. I have to say, the amount of times the word “sex” is said in this scene is a little jarring-like, look at me in my adult book with characters who have SEX! Although in fairness, I much prefer the word “sex” to cringey metaphors about it. We find out that Olive once had a thing with her leading man in Little Shop of Horrors, and it ended with the guy two-timing her with another actress (being a “starfucker”, shagging his way to the top). The other actress is called Rosanna Lime, by the way. It’s my least favourite name so far.
Oscar gets recognised by a schoolgirl on the tube, and Olive looks down on her for her short skirt and high heels. The teenager says “my mates are gonna be well jel”. I quite enjoyed the attempt at teenage dialogue, as it did make a change, but was also an adult trying to emulate teenage speech rather than actual teenage speech, if that makes sense? It was very “how do you do, fellow kids?” Carrie also uses this chapter to explain that actors are paid the same no matter how many tickets are sold, and that Oscar being stunt-cast doesn’t matter because there’s no way he’d have been cast if he wasn’t actually good. These are both fair enough to be honest, but again, it just felt like Carrie talking.
Back at Oscar’s flat, Olive calls a gin a Ginny Weasley, which again just sounds like Carrie. There is no characterisation here. They sleep together, but oh no, a picture of them kissing in public has gone viral on Twitter. A soap actor kissing an unknown stage actress? Front page news, I should think. Whatever will they do?