Two very different women set out for Hollywood in film producer DeMarco's second novel (after Cranberry Queen), a humorous take on the image-obsessed world of moviemaking and moneymaking. Ruthless Josie O'Leary wants to be a movie producer and will do anything to get ahead—including dumping her husband when he is diagnosed with testicular cancer. A publicist acquaintance gives her crucial advice: "Glom. As in 'I glom, you glom, everyone gloms.' Find talent—an actor, a writer, if you're lucky, a director—and weld yourself to their hip." Eagerly taking her at her word, Josie gloms onto writer Joshua King, author of a promising script called The Bear Who Saved Christmas. Meanwhile, in New York, Carla Trousse, an unemployed writer with an unfinished dissertation, decides she is fed up with the East Coast. Her aunt Paulette, who lives in Southern California, tells her she has "something" she needs to discuss with Carla and suggests she move out west. When she does, she is swept up in a whirlwind of Tinseltown intrigue, finally colliding with Josie in the office of Henry Antonelli, a Clint Eastwoodesque veteran movie star with his own production company. The revelation that Carla is Henry's illegitimate daughter fuels the tangled developments that follow. Carla's haplessness and honesty make her a nice foil for Josie, with her pitbull-like tenacity and ruthless duplicity, but the novel's plotting spins out of control with the haphazard introduction of secondary characters and subplots. Structural weaknesses aside, this is an enjoyable read and a pleasantly lightweight spoof of Hollywood behavior. (June)
