Synopses & Reviews
Billie Livingstons fine second novel leads us to consider the nature of our hidden lives and desires — and to question whether the sky would really fall if we admitted our true needs and ceased to blush.
As Cease to Blush opens, Vivian is late to her own mothers funeral. Wearing a tight red suit, Vivian stands out like a pornographers dream amongst the West Coast intellectuals mourning the death of prominent feminist Josie Callwood. But for all of her bravado, Vivian finds herself emotionally numb and spiraling downward. Vivian and her mother were in constant conflict, with Josie disapproving of her daughters lifestyle; her inclination to use her body instead of her brain, and her so-called acting career, which has amounted to little more than playing prostitutes and the odd dead body. For her part Vivian has been invested in antagonizing her mothers feminist ideology. As the story opens Vivians career, as well as her relationship with boyfriend Frank, is taking an unsavoury turn as she wades into the quick cash scheme of Internet porn with herself cast in the lead.
But Josie has left a big surprise for her troubled daughter: a trunk full of mementoes from her own past, all of which point to a secret life more exotic than anything Vivian has been able to pull off. Puzzling together bits and pieces, Vivian learns that her mother was at one time a burlesque performer named Celia Dare who rubbed shoulders with the flashiest celebrities of the sixties. Vivian becomes determined to uncover the true story of her mothers life.
Chasing rumours, Vivian sets off down the Pacific coast and soon finds out that truth is a slippery snake. With only a few of her mothers letters, some guarded anecdotes from Josies former confidant and a slew of books about the sixties, Vivian begins to re-create her mothers life, placing her at the heart of some of the biggest events and scenes of the era. From the protests and beat coffeehouses of Haight-Ashbury to the frenzied nightlife of Rat Pack Vegas, from the political soirées of New York to mob meetings in glitzy Miami hotels, Celia Dare saw and did it all. Yet the glamour hid an ugly underbelly, and as Vivian peels away the layers of the past she begins to uncover her own emotional truths as well.
Cease to Blush drives the bumpy road from the burlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to the bedroom Internet porn business, exploring just how far women have really come. In Vivian, Livingston has created the perfect character through which to explore what it means to be an independent woman today; with Celia/Josie, its clear that things werent so cut and dry in her day either. Though Celias story is told vividly here, its accuracy is impossible to gauge and the ghosts are not talking. But maybe this is Celias gift to Vivian: the ability of the past not only to illuminate the future, but to re-imagine it.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Hugely entertaining, irreverent and challenging, Billie Livingston’ s new novel drives the bumpy road from the burlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to the bedroom Internet porn scenes of today, exploring just how far women have really come.
Vivian is late to her own mother’ s funeral. Wearing a skintight lipstick-red suit, Vivian stands out like a pornographer’ s dream amongst the raven collection of West Coast intellectuals mourning the untimely death of the famous feminist Josie Callwood. Self-medicating grief with vodka, Vivian can’ t help trying to stick her finger in the eye of her dead mother’ s expectations.
Dead people have a hard time protecting their secrets, and Josie has left one big surprise for her troubled daughter. When she opens a trunk in her mother’ s basement, Vivian discovers that Josie wasn’ t who she seemed – and that she had a flaming sexual past more exotic than anything Vivian has been able to pull off. Chasing the lies her mother told her, Vivian sets off on a road trip in which memory, reality and imagination collide to recreate the kaleidoscope world of America in the sixties. In disbelief and dawning admiration, she follows her mother’ s trail through the Vegas nexus where movie stars, pop singers, strippers, politicians and the mob mingled, where the Rat Pack ruled and girls were arm and eye candy.
As she uncovers her mother’ s true story, Vivian ends up confronting her own sexual lies and spiritual evasions. Billie Livingston’ s fine novel leads us to consider the nature of our hidden desires – and to question whether the sky would really fall if we admitted our true needsand ceased to blush.
Excerpt from Cease to Blush:
I have read that people – women – often come to some understanding with their mothers, in their thirties. Things always take me longer. I had anticipated this scorpion dance of ours might fade away in my forties. But she hadn’ t given me the luxury of time. I was furious with her for it. I was always furious with her, but this was the capper.
She had never wanted me to find things out for myself – she was always pushing and prodding me to become some kind of starkly sensible brain-on-legs. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. When I graduated high school and started modelling, she patiently enunciated, “ You’ re a smart young woman. Why waste something so precious prancing around for the camera, looking like a drag queen.” My clever comeback: “ Well, there’ s ’ sposed to be a Playboy scout coming to town. Then I could wear less and make more.” I tapped my temple. “ Always thinking, see.”
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Billie Livingston is a fiction writer, poet and sometime essayist who lives in Vancouver, B.C. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, she grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, and has since lived in Tokyo, Hamburg, Munich and London, England. Her first employment was filling the dairy coolers in a Macs Milk. She went on to work varying lengths of time as a file clerk, receptionist, cocktail waitress, model, actor, chocolate sampler and booth host at a plumbers convention.
Cease to Blush (2006) is Billie Livingstons second novel. Her first, Going Down Swinging (2000), is told from the viewpoints of an alcoholic, downtrodden mother named Eilleen and her struggling daughter Grace. It was received as a brilliant debut, with one reviewer commenting: “Livingston succeeds gorgeously in capturing the messiness and unresolvable ambiguities of familial love. Her lovingly drawn, half-crazy characters always transcend a caseworkers clichés.” Livingstons first book of poetry, The Chick at the Back of the Church (2001), was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award (for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman), and her award-winning short fiction has been published in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. She is currently working on a new novel.
In creating the character of Vivian for Cease to Blush, Livingston drew on a few experiences from her career as a model and actor. For instance, Vivians gig as a corpse was based on something that actually happened to Livingston: “They called and asked if I wanted to do a photo shoot for a show called Touching Evil, playing a dead body,” Livingston commented in one interview. “I was dead by the side of a river, and they put strangle marks on my neck. Then they changed their mind. They said, ‘No, wrong corpse. Then they put all this white makeup on, wrapped me in a shower curtain and photographed me strangled, on a bathroom floor. So that was why I was there for so long. All the other [dead] girls were sent home after three hours.” But at the same time, Livingston has to laugh when people assume the book is autobiographical — “Yes, every word — in fact I think Bobby Kennedy is my daddy!” — rather than recognizing that the best fiction always draws tidbits from wherever it can, whether inspiration, research or the authors own life.
In truth, the writing of Cease to Blush couldnt have happened without Livingstons extensive research into not only the events of the sixties but also everything from evangelical churches to the porn industry. Fortunately, Livingston has a passion for meeting new people who can take her into their worlds, and has commented, “I really do love talking to strangers… Even when theyre really odd or sort of creepy, theres a little part of you that kind of — what do I want to say? — its almost like you fall in love with them a little bit, because theyre so fascinating. Theyre so at odds with anything youve ever seen up until that moment.” Not surprisingly, much of Cease to Blush was written on road trips as Livingston went in search of Vivians story through the western United States.
To recreate the headiness and tumult of the sixties and the Rat Pack scene, Livingston also turned to the many books and films that provide accounts of the time. Luckily, this research tied in with one of the main themes of Cease to Blush, which is the subjective nature of truth — and especially the difficulty we have in figuring out the “truth” of the past. As Livingston put it in one interview, “I read all those biographies so that I could recreate all of those people, yet you read three biographies of the same person and theyre all different. It calls [the truth] into question: if four people are in a room and an event happens, they all have a different observation of how it all went down.”
From the Hardcover edition.
Reading Group Guide
1. Why did Sally give the trunk to Vivian after Josies death?
2. The novel opens with Vivians story, but then Livingston weaves in the story of Celias life (as written by Vivian). How does the one inform the other? Which narrative did you find more compelling?
3. Other than Vivians close friend Len, the men is this novel are pretty awful: misogynists, cheaters, exploiters and so on. Even Celias father figures are notorious criminals. Does this just reflect the worlds Celia and Vivian live in, or is Livingston doing something more here?
4. Talk about the ways in which many different characters are trapped, and the importance of reinventing oneself.
5. What is Vivian really looking for as she tries to piece together her mothers past? And even if the truth is elusive, does she find the answers she needs?
6. The novel opens with, and takes its title from, a Marquis de Sade quote: “Women without principles are never more dangerous than at the age when they have ceased to blush.” Vivian thinks about what it means in Chapter 4. How would you interpret the quote, both in general and in terms of this book?
7. Why is Annie West so reluctant to tell Vivian about the past?
8. Many scenes in the novel highlight how feminism has changed over the generations, and the struggles real women have with meeting its expectations (e.g. Josie bleaching her leg hair). Compare the experiences of women like Vivian, Celia/Josie, Annie West, Erin and Sally in this light.
9. When seen through the lens of nostalgia, the burlesques and stripteases of the Rat Pack heyday seem exciting and glamorous. How does Livingston both play up and question that view? Compare such acts of the past with todays strip shows and Internet porn.
10. Does the Celia Dare of the letters Annie gives to Vivian sound like the Celia Dare imagined by Vivian?
11. Vivians arrival at her moms funeral, the evangelist scene at the motel, Vivians bizarre gig as a corpse, even the chat on porn sites… Livingston uses a lot of humour throughout the novel, especially in scenes that turn out to be darker than we may expect. Discuss the role of humour in the novel overall.
12. Discuss the blurry line between biography and fiction, when it comes to using real people from the past as characters. Do you feel Livingston did a good job of bringing the Rat Pack era to life on the page? Did your opinion of various celebrities from the past change when reading this novel?
13. Why was Vivian with Frank for so long?
14. How has Vivians view of her own life changed by the end of the novel? What parallels can you draw between her transformation and Celias reinvention as Josie?
15. Josie had always criticized Vivian for not living up to her potential. Why couldnt Josie just open up about her own past, and use her experiences as a cautionary example?
16. Of all the characters, who did you relate to (or like) the best? On the other hand, who was the least likable, and why?