From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his Cellular Trilogy, novelist Wagner gleefully excoriated Hollywood vanity and pretense. Obviously his hunger for butchering Tinseltown's sacred cows was not sated because in his latest work he continues to carve them up. His uproarious new satire focuses on a trio of psychologically and emotionally fragile actors, each of whom carries the added baggage of a very famous and successful parent. The story is told from the perspective of Bertie Krohn, the soon-to-be-middle-aged son of the "creator-producer in perpetua of TV's longest-running syndicated space opera,
Starwatch: The Navigators." After several attempts to make it on his own artistically, Bertie succumbs to nepotism and joins the cast of
Starwatch. The book revolves around his interactions with two other actors who are appearing on the series. The first is Clea Fremantle, his childhood crush and the daughter of a "legendary film actress." The other is Thad Michelet, the 50-something son of a universally revered, award-winning author. Much as Jeffrey Frank did in his excellent novel
The Columnist, Wagner crafts a savage meditation on contemporary self-involvement—his characters are vacuous, name-dropping black holes of self-absorption. The writing itself is wonderfully bad, as Bertie the hapless hack attempts to chronicle his melodramatic tale with 25-cent words ("commodious," "numinous," etc.) and wickedly overwrought metaphors ("Thad's hungry eyes surveyed the topography of human detail unfolding before him like a jet devouring a runway during takeoff"). It's a short, sharp book that puts a dagger right in the heart of Hollywood.
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Few writers capture the egregious emptiness of Hollywood as well as Wagner, who once again casts his jaundiced eye upon the requisite retinue of movers and shakers, hotshots and hopefuls who make up the frequently peculiar and often perverse entertainment industry subculture. His latest tongue-in-cheek effort follows the lives of three descendants of Hollywood royalty: Clea, the daughter of a glamorous, cult-status actress; Thad, son of an internationally acclaimed author; and Bertie, the story's narrator, whose father created TV's longest-running interspace sci-fi series. Struggling to equal, if not eclipse, their legendary parents' reputations, the friends tragically fall far short of the mark, myopically concerned with maintaining the self-destructive addictions they acquire to mask their self-perceived inadequacies. Liberally name-dropping references to industry icons and squeezing in as many allusions to popular cultural trends as possible, Wagner takes no prisoners; anyone and anything is fodder for his gossip mill. Though his plot is often convoluted and laborious, Wagner's satire is at once biting and broad based, his wit both razor sharp and slyly subtle.
Carol HaggasCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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