By Antonia Quirke
310 pages; Overlook

James Dean's sensational hands. Christopher Walken's delicately "poisonous" lips. The charisma is in the details for Brit film critic Antonia Quirke, who at age 10 hyperventilated at her first glimpse of Brando. Choking on Marlon Brandon (Overlook) is a tantalizing playbill of one woman's magnificent obsession with men in celluloid.

— Cathleen Medwick