I, Gloria Grahame is sharp and salty

25Oct 2021.

I’m just going to say it: Sky Gilbert’s new novel I, Gloria Grahame, is my favourite novel of the year. Maybe of the past ten years. It glides, it snakes around the reader so tight I had to read the entire thing in one sitting, which I’ve never actually done before. 

Why is it so special? There are two main characters, the famous movie actress Gloria Grahame (Best Supporting Actress for The Bad and the Beautiful, plus memorable turns in The Big Heat, Oklahoma, In A Lonely Place, and The Greatest Show on Earth, among others), and theatre professor Denton Moulton, somewhat based on Sky himself (Sky teaches theatre at University of Guelph.) Both stories are told in the first person. Gloria tells of the legendary and quite true incident in which she, while married to film director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause, mostly), had sex with his 13-year-old son, who she eventually married ten years later. I know, sordid, Hollywood style, but Sky’s carefully applied empathy accounts for what happened and precisely how it happened. We actually side with Gloria on this one. 
Then there’s the professor, forever falling in love with his cute young male students, and facing an uphill battle securing funding for a play he wants to produce. He goes to the arts council and faces some rather hostile rejection. But these scenes aren’t angry. They’re laugh-out-loud funny. I won’t spoil the conclusion, but the professor must resort to some pretty desperate measures to get what he wants. 
I’ll admit some of my ardour for the book comes from identification. I too teach courses, and I too love old movies and yes, Gloria Grahame has always been one of my favourites. In some ways, the novel feels tailor-made for my enthusiasms. And I particularly like the way Sky slays the dragons. The satire is sharp and salty.

Sky’s life is full of ups and downs, most notably a very public break with the theatre company he founded in the '80s, and he’s put lots of scandalous imagery out there, on stage, on screen, even on Pride floats. His reputation precedes him. But I, Gloria Grahame seems to come from another place entirely, somewhere deep inside the writer where his sense of satisfaction must reside, and the plunge it took to write this novel was totally worth it. God, I wish I could make it into a movie.

I, Gloria Grahame is available through Rare Machines, a new imprint of Dundurn Press.