The Day Marlene Dietrich Died

Description

208 pages
$15.95
ISBN 0-88982-161-5
DDC C813'.54

Publisher

Year

1996

Contributor

Reviewed by Louise E. Allin

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

Review

Building a collection of stories linked by reactions to the day the film
goddess died is a tall order. Dietrich, after all, wasn’t John
Kennedy. Yet for the most part, Rachel Wyatt, an accomplished
storyteller, succeeds.

One man had a brief conversation with the singer during a concert in
Europe at the end of World War II and carried the memory forever. In
“A Wall of Bright Stone,” his daughter tours Germany with her
lesbian lover, rallying the mourners over Dietrich’s grave. Older
women emulate her (“Sometimes I Look at Younger Men”), and a
middle-aged writer goes home to comfort his dying mother, recalling how
his mother serenaded him with “Lili Marlene.”

A few stories mention the Dietrich theme only in passing (“The Violet
Bed”) or trace earlier characters in their post-Dietrich activities
(“The Yellow Canoe”). Omitting these tangential stories would have
helped the unity, but even so, Wyatt’s fiction can stand on its own.
Her imagery is sharp and faithful, the dialogue crisp, and the settings
imaginative.

Citation

Wyatt, Rachel., “The Day Marlene Dietrich Died,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed January 8, 2025, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/4077.