Book Review: The Only Woman in the Room (OT) (Hedy Lamarr, frequency hopping)

The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel, by Marie Benedict (Sourcebooks, 2019, 254 pages, $25.99)

 

The Beautiful Hedy Lamarr

The most beautiful woman in the world. The teenage girl who married the wealthiest man (an arms dealer) in Austria and who hosted dinner parties for Mussolini and Hitler. The wife who was kept under lock and key for five years until she escaped her castle disguised as her maid, landing in London on her way to Hollywood. The star who talked MGM into a salary five times the original offer. The Grade B movie star whose name everyone knows. The scientist and inventor. Scientist and inventor?

After six husbands, this most beautiful woman underwent plastic surgery, shoplifted and became a recluse.

Too Beautiful to Create Frequency-Hopping?

Was her beauty a disadvantage? Why didn’t the US Navy accept her design of a guided torpedo system that was unjammable, using frequency hopping? Was it because the inventors were a famous actress and a pianist who based their design on the 88 piano keys?

Why frequency-hopping anyway? Was it because our heroine really felt guilty hearing about the Axis war plans and not telling anyone? Did her remorse lead to her designing improvements to the weapons capability of the US, her adopted country? Or was that only exaggerated self-importance? Did she take those plans with her ‘from the other side’?

Style

Following on the heels of the 2017documentary, Bombshell, Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room, is a suspenseful, short, fast-reading novel.

The 44 chapters are short which makes the book easy to put down and pick up again when the reader has just a moment and each chapter is uniquely titled only with the date and location (city, state, e.g.). Most chapters tell the story months after the preceding chapter but do give a quick summary of what took place in the meantime so the timeline is continuous.

Benedict’s writing style is fun and fast with plenty of thought-provoking questions. Only the discussion questions at the end (for book clubs) are elementary. I see this as a movie with narrator voice-overs.

The author also penned the fictional ‘true’ story of Einstein’s cousin-wife and Carnegie’s maid. The Hedy Lamarr book has a sample chapter of the new Darling Clementine (Churchill) historical novel, written in the same style (which can easily become tedious).

And the Title?

The title, The Only Woman in the Room, appears twice in the novel and can have more than one meaning. Hopefully your book club will select this book and members may present various interpretations, from Hedy being that rare woman scientist (without the requisite academic background) to Hedy hosting dinners for various country leaders who were mostly men to . . . .

In summary, this reviewer learned a very entertaining ‘bunch of stuff’ and really felt what it was like to be a member of the wealthy elite (and to be an abused wife) and looks forward to reading more historic novels by Marie Benedict - but not for a while (have to let the writing style recede a bit first).