LitPicks Book Reviews—August 2012
| Theme—Hollywood, vanity of vanities This month is Bonfire of the Vanities, Hollywood style. Three authors take aim at the self-consuming, self-important culture of the film world. Yet they also remind us that it's the wider culture that drives—and thrives on—Hollywood's vanities. |
The Next Best Thing
Jennifer Weiner, 2012
400 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
August, 2012
Author Jennifer Weiner is a 21st-century Jane Austen, who uses her sharp eye and sharper wit to skewer modern-day convention. In this book Weiner turns her sights on Hollywood...and conjures up a delicious satire.
Ruthie Saunders, Weiner's smart, funny heroine, was raised watching The Golden Girls—where "the skies are always sunny...not everyone is beautiful...and love sustains you." So what's a good girl to do but live life as a TV sitcom? Or better yet, write one.
Beautiful Ruins
Jess Walter, 2012
352 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
August 2012
Life in this stunning new novel, set primarily in Hollywood and Italy, is made up of moments of startling clarity—moments capable of changing lives.
The difficulty is in recognizing those moments, holding on to them, and making them matter. Which is what Jess Walters is so very good at showing—how hard his characters find it to pin down the fleeting randomness of life.
The Last Tycoon (Aka The Love of the Last Tycoon)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1941
208 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
August, 2012
Fitzgerald died before he finished The Last Tycoon. But as critic Edmund Wilson wrote at the time, despite its unfinished and unpolished state, "it is far and away the best novel of Hollywood we have." Many think it remains so 70 years later.
Monroe Stahr, the eponymous tycoon, is a film producer at the top of the Hollywood heap. Charismatic, brilliant, and expert in every aspect of filming, Stahr has built the production system over which he rules. He is Hollywood royalty. And he falls in love.
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