β Scribed by David, Anna
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
David, who has written about celebrities for glossy mags, delivers the saga of Amelia Stone, who writes about celebrities for a trashy gossip magazine. Amelia's on the L.A. merry-go-round of sex, booze and drugs, and she likes the ride and the A-list company. The patter is bubbly and witty, whether Amelia is getting in trouble at work, getting tangled up in another sexual exploit, snorting lines or puking on herself. Then her parents send her to a luxe rehab clinic after she ODs and gets fired, and on her last day there she learns she's been tapped, on the basis of her wild reputation, to write a column for a major magazine. The hitch? She's now sober, something she's afraid to admit to her employer. Amelia's deliberation on this point is drawn out, though David finds a steady supply of material in Amelia's closet sobriety. Between fake vodka shots and interest from HBO to turn her column into a series (yes, really), Amelia finds her way to a happy, sober ending. There will be inevitable comparisons to Sex and the City (Amelia is certainly cast in the Carrie Bradshaw mold), but pink book jacket connoisseurs will likely prefer the original.
Copyright Β© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Fans of Candace Bushnell and Jane Green will lap up David's debut novel, based on her real-life experiences as a cocaine-snorting Hollywood socialite. Billed as this summer's beach read, Party Girl is the tale of twentysomething Amelia Stone, lowly staff writer at Absolutely Fabulous, a celebrity gossip sheet. Amelia's round-the-clock revelry (and frequent visits to the office bathroom for a fix) get her fired from her job. There are the obligatory stint at rehab (the book's best moments, by far) and the chance at a new beginning as a society columnist for a leading magazine. But can Amelia banter about the decadent lifestyle without actually indulging in it? If journalist and television commentator David has done even half the drugs of her fictional creation, it's a wonder she's aliveβand coherent enough to write about it. It's hard to muster much sympathy for Amelia, who lacks the self-deprecation of Sex and the City narrator Carrie Bradshaw. This is mildly engaging stuff, most valuable, perhaps, as a cautionary tale (Paris Hilton, take note). Block, Allison
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
### From Publishers Weekly David, who has written about celebrities for glossy mags, delivers the saga of Amelia Stone, who writes about celebrities for a trashy gossip magazine. Amelia's on the L.A. merry-go-round of sex, booze and drugs, and she likes the ride and the A-list company. The patter i
### From Publishers Weekly David, who has written about celebrities for glossy mags, delivers the saga of Amelia Stone, who writes about celebrities for a trashy gossip magazine. Amelia's on the L.A. merry-go-round of sex, booze and drugs, and she likes the ride and the A-list company. The patter i
A brilliant and utterly engaging novel--Emma set in modern Asia--about a young woman's rise in the glitzy, moneyed city of Singapore, where old traditions clash with heady modern materialism. On the edge of twenty-seven, Jazzy hatches a plan for her and her best girlfriends: Sher, Imo, and Fann. Be