Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
As an intern for a Hollywood production designer, Emi spends her time combing estate sales, online shops, and flea markets for the perfect accessory. When an estate-sale purchase reveals a letter from a late famous film actor, delivering the letter leads to the star’s granddaughter, Ava, a troubled runaway who never knew who her grandfather was. Emi is smitten, and she’s also enchanted with the rags-to-riches story the discovery will facilitate for the beautiful and winsome Ava. Emi wants it to mirror a Hollywood-style fantasy, but at the same time she doesn’t want to share Ava with the fame that will swallow her once it becomes known who she is, especially when Ava lands the lead role in an indie film Emi is working on. As Emi designs sets for Ava’s character, she works equally hard on learning who Ava really is beyond her fantasy, and ultimately comes to understand that real love transcends anything movies can capture. This tenderly wrought romance is as much an homage to the power of movies as it is to true love. As an industry insider, Emi feels [End Page 37] the weighty burden of creating environments that enable people to believe in the illusion of life offered on the screen. At the same time, though, she’s all too aware of the disappointment of finding out that actors and their stories are messy, complicated, and disappointingly life-sized. Her explanations and reflections on the work she does as a production designer are illuminating on practical, psychological, and emotional levels; readers will gain a new appreciation for the strategic importance of set design even as they lose their hearts to Emi and Ava.
