Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale

Trynin takes readers along on her wild ride up and down the cutthroat, fad-driven pop music machine—but her trip is more of a wacky nightmare than a fairy tale. In college, majoring in creative writing, she is thrilled by a band playing "loud and angry and fast." She joins a rock band, playing guitar and singing, and when the cops shut them down, she "never had so much fun." After several years trying to "get out of the Sunday-through-Wednesday-night folk/acoustic-chick-band wasteland and into the rock scene," she decides that if "something really wow isn't happening by the time I'm thirty, I'm done." And something wow does happen. With a self-styled geek-grunge makeover and a new raunchy electric guitar attitude, suddenly Trynin is being courted by entertainment lawyers, managers and major labels. She survives the exhilarating, terrifying, lonely whirlwind by starving herself, smoking, drinking and surreptitiously sleeping with her bass player. Trynin is charming: ingenuous but intelligent, whimsical but savvy. When she's dropped by the heavies as abruptly as she was discovered, it's a relief she has a steady, sensible boyfriend to settle down with, particularly since her passion for rock and roll seems to be more about youthful rebellion than music. Agent, Elyse Cheney. (Feb. 1)