Lillian and Dash: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “Over the years, Toperoff has been a master at blending fact and fiction...and in this book his handling of the Hammett/Hellman relationship and the Hollywood of their time is exemplary and brilliant.  He has a great ear for their speech, and Toperoff delivers the historical period with not only credibility, but insight as well. And of course it's a book about writers and writing, and thus the relationships between ego and talent, success and the lure of self-destruction.”

  — Stephen Dunn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry              

• “I have been reading Sam Toperoff’s fiction for decades. He is a wonderful writer, shamefully underappreciated…Fascinating and engrossing, one of those rare books that would help you through an airplane flight without insulting your intelligence. In a word, it’s literature. It also happens to be dark and sexy and, I would think, ripe for the movies.”

  — Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner

• “This is a novel that reimagines their relationship…with a strong dose of Golden Age romanticism.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “A canny exploration of the long affair between writers Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and Lillian Hellman (1905-1984), which endured alcoholism, war, and McCarthyism…Toperoff locates the private passions in an intense, public, and ultimately tragic love story without indulging in glitz or melodrama.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “Toperoff captures time and place and most importantly two vital people. It is not easy to write about writers, but with energy and wit and skill, Toperoff brings Hellman and Hammett’s talent and pain directly into the present.”

  — George Vecsey, former sports columnist, New York Times