Silver Lake - (Aubrey McKee Novels) by Alex Pugsley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

It was on a fully dark February night when I went to the Communist's Daughter to meet a friend who never showed that my life in movies began.

So begins the third installment in a series of standalone novels about the life and travels of Aubrey McKee. Set in Toronto and Silver Lake, a creative neighbourhood in Los Angeles, the novel chronicles with infectious élan Aubrey's journey from broken-hearted derelict to B-movie production assistant, comedy writer, and science-fiction screenwriter, all the way up to feature film director. Along the way, he encounters long-ago childhood friends, manic producers, NHL players turned talk show hosts, Victoria's Secret models, impulsive movie stars . . . and his own rising destiny.

Review Quotes

Praise for Silver Lake

"Alex Pugsley's Silver Lake is sharp and hilarious and illuminates a world of vivid characters all too familiar to me."
--Mark McKinney, The Kids in the Hall and Superstore

"One of the smartest, funniest vivisections of youthful Hollywood arrival I've ever read. With an ear for dialogue to rival Richard Price, a cool eye for the town's foibles both ancient and modern, and a thoughtful sensibility that refuses to slide into caricature, Pugsley is my new favorite writer."
--Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour

"Pugsley's tone throughout is wry and self-aware, the ideal combination for capturing Aubrey's mix of ambition and angst. Pugsley's nearly three decades of experience in film and television lend the novel a healthy dose of realism. For anyone who's followed Aubrey's story in Aubrey McKee (2020) and The Education of Aubrey McKee (2024), this is an entertaining step forward, and for those new to his journey, it will almost certainly provide encouragement to hop on for the rest of the ride. A smart, witty Hollywood tale."
--Kirkus Reviews

Praise for the Aubrey McKee Series

"Aubrey, captivated as much by his lover's eccentricities as he is by her striking beauty, strives with equal energy to penetrate the mystery of a life that's been damaged by her abuse. But even as Aubrey believes he's come to terms with the 'emotional schizophrenia of our relations, ' when Gudrun's career takes a turn that propels her in an exciting creative direction, he finds himself ill-prepared to cope . . . A realistic portrait of a complex romance between two mismatched but sympathetic characters."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A fun and fascinating read from start to finish, The Education of Aubrey McKee continues to showcase author Alex Pugsley's genuine flair for original, distinctive, and narrative driven storytelling style."
--Midwest Book Review

"The Education of Aubrey McKee is alive with raucous humour, drunken abandon, soul searching and soul-crushing crushes. Full to the gills with art making and poetry and TV scripts written on spec, posturing and the true thing. Every page is feverish and suave. Pugsley is the love child of Jack Kerouac and Greta Gerwig, or D.H. Lawrence and Wes Anderson--ticklingly funny and dead serious at the same time."
--Lisa Moore, author of This Is How We Love

"This amazing book is nothing 'in turns'--instead it is everywhere continuously lyric, hilarious, and heartbreaking. The promise of Alex Pugsley's nonchalant epic, as of this second entry, is worthy of crazy comparisons--Balzac, Jonathan Coe, etc . . . Pugsley's project operates on a similar double-scale, always wittily precise, even sometimes zany in the particulars, yet with the sense that a picture of time itself has been captured, through windows in front of which his portrait-subjects merely happen to be seated."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel

"The novel has an inventive structure, beginning with a short story set sometime in the future about Aubrey working as a writer on a sketch-comedy show and ending with a play by Aubrey."
--Publisher's Weekly

"Evoking comparisons in both style and substance to the work of John Irving and Robertson Davies in its assemblage of perceptive, richly detailed character studies . . . The life of a Canadian city is revealed with verve and insight."
--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Alex Pugsley has worked on over 185 produced episodes of television, writing for performers such as Lauren Ash, Scott Thompson, Jenn Whalen, Mark McKinney, Dan Aykroyd, and Michael Cera. He wrote and directed the feature film Dirty Singles which won for him the Irving Avrich Emerging Filmmaker Award at TIFF. Following the publication of his first novel, Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC's Writers to Watch. His first story collection, Shimmer, was nominated for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, and his most recent novel, The Education of Aubrey McKee, was longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards.