📖 Book Review ~ The Original by Priya Parmar

Allison & Busby
18 June 2026

Thanks to the publisher for the invitation to read this book

Katharine Hepburn won more Oscars than any actor in history – and yet her most memorable role is the one she carved out for herself. 

Hollywood in the early 1930s is a town full of secrets. When Katharine Hepburn arrives to launch her film career, she leaves behind her East Coast marriage and icy patrician family to live and love on her own terms. But stars must play by the rules and Kate, brilliant and bisexual, refuses to conform. 

Surrounded by a legendary circle of intimates, including the powerful David and Irene Selznick, charming and romantically conflicted actor Cary Grant, ambitious director John Ford, and millionaire tycoon Howard Hughes, Kate navigates a web of sex, ambition, loyalty, and betrayal. All of them strive for success while struggling to outrun their own secrets. As Kate’s career ascends, she faces an agonising choice: be the star everyone wants her to be, or risk everything to become the woman she always was. 

Drawing on primary archival sources, Parmar brings a novelist’s eye and a fresh perspective to Hepburn’s life and sparkling career..

📖 My Review..

Whilst Katharine Hepburn was one of the most iconic female Hollywood stars of the twentieth century, I knew very little about her life. This fictional account of her early years, with her unusual family and her subsequent rise to fame in tinsel town, is done with a fine eye for historical detail and an interesting way of writing.

 

Whilst took me a while to gel with the author’s style once I was used to the succinct nature of the narrative so a story began to emerge of a complex woman who conquered life, and the movie industry, in her own indomitable way and, as the book title suggests, in her own distinctly original way.

Well written, with interesting detail, The Original is a fictional story, which reads like an intimate memoir, about a strong and immensely talented woman who lived life on her own terms  and who made no apology for doing so, especially as she wanted to make her mark in a powerful, male dominated profession.

About the Author

Priya Parmar is the author of the novels Exit the Actress and Vanessa and Her Sister, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as co-author of the musical Sylvia (London Old Vic) nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Original Musical. Her forthcoming novel, The Original, is published by Allison & Busby in June 2026. She lives with her family and four rescue dogs.

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