{"id":44426,"date":"2026-05-21T06:50:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/?p=44426"},"modified":"2026-05-20T22:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T04:25:26","slug":"and-it-only-took-100-years-by-alan-shayne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/?p=44426","title":{"rendered":"And It Only Took 100 Years\u2026 by Alan Shayne"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Reflective, humane, and beautifully observed.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are memoirs that recount achievement, and there are memoirs that illuminate the emotional history of an era. Shayne\u2019s memoir does both with uncommon elegance. One might expect a Hollywood memoir full of glamorous anecdotes and executive triumphs (and there are certainly plenty, from Broadway beginnings to Shayne\u2019s rise as President of Warner Television) but the book\u2019s real power lies elsewhere: in its portrait of a young gay man coming of age in a world where desire could scarcely be named aloud.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shayne writes with novelistic detail about 1940s Cape Cod, where he spends a lonely summer working in his grandmother\u2019s chaotic tourist shop while struggling to understand himself. The emotional repression of the era emerges not through polemic, but through moments of awkwardness, secrecy, and yearning. \u201cI like boys, too,\u201d an older man finally tells him during a pivotal scene late in the summer. The line lands with quiet force because Shayne has spent pages showing how impossible such honesty once felt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is equally sharp in smaller moments. When the insecure teenage Alan asks his grandmother, \u201cAm I good-looking?\u201d she replies bluntly, \u201cYour nose is too big.\u201d In two lines, Shayne captures the fragile self-consciousness that would shape much of his early life. Later, in one of the memoir\u2019s tenderest exchanges, Roger tells him, \u201cYou have to come to me.\u201d The invitation feels as emotional as it does physical, a first step toward self-acceptance. In the end, the book becomes more than a story of longevity or Hollywood success; it is the story of surviving long enough to live openly, and of discovering that love, after all the secrecy and fear, can endure almost a century. A triumph.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Only-Took-100-Years-ebook\/dp\/B0GCVCMSWC\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Buy now<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rand-Smith LLC<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pub date February 10, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ISBN 978-1950544622<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Price $12.99 Kindle unlimited, $29.95 Hardcover<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflective, humane, and beautifully observed. There are memoirs that recount achievement, and there are memoirs that illuminate the emotional history of an era. Shayne\u2019s memoir does both with uncommon elegance. One might expect a Hollywood memoir full of glamorous anecdotes and executive triumphs (and there are certainly plenty, from Broadway beginnings to Shayne\u2019s rise as President of Warner Television) but the book\u2019s real power lies elsewhere: in its portrait of a young gay man coming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145610851,"featured_media":44430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[723771748,723771747,723771746,723771751,723771287,723769804,723769803,723771749,723771750,19397,3748,723769805],"class_list":["post-44426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alan-shayne","tag-and-it-only-took-100-years","tag-and-it-only-took-100-years-by-alan-shayne","tag-biographies-of-actors-entertainers","tag-goodreads","tag-kindle","tag-kobo","tag-lgbtq-biographies","tag-lgbtq-biographies-memoirs","tag-memoir","tag-non-fiction","tag-nook"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/and-it-only.jpg?fit=293%2C466&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pajKJn-byy","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/145610851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44431,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions\/44431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}