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READING THE TBR, DAY 74: Last Night at Chateau Marmont (2010) by Lauren Weisberger

In company with most every other woman in the world, I read The Devil Wears Prada, and while it drove me to distraction with its doormat heroine and snarky colleague and martinet boss — brought so gloriously to life in the star-studded film — it was nevertheless entertaining chick lit, and marked Lauren Weisberger as an author I… didn’t mind reading.

So when I saw this book on one of those giveaway Take-a-Book Leave-a-Book installations at a shopping centre, I took it. And it languished unread for at least six years before I finally got around to it today. And… yeah. It was… fine.

The story of nutritionist Brooke and aspiring musician Julian, whose happy Manhattan lives are turned upside down by Julian’s sudden worldwide success as the hit singer-songwriter of the moment, it is a study of a marriage as much as it is of the fame industrial complex. There are the pushy Hollywood types, all about image and self-promotion, and there are the fabulous events at which Weisberger namedrops stars real and imagined, and there are starstruck friends and family and acquaintances and there is the ever present paparazzi and gossip rags, seemingly determined to tear our happy couple apart.

And, of course, there is the drunken mistake that threatens to end a long-term relationship.

Brooke is a very sympathetic heroine, even if she is not very assertive, and Julian’s narcissism and self-involvement after he hits it big is understandable, if not especially commendable. These are very real people, in a very surreal situation, and Weisberger cunningly makes us care for them, in all their foibles and flaws. It’s easy to read a book like this and be dismayed by how a character handled it, to put yourself in their shoes and declare you’d do it differently, better. But the trick Weisberger pulls off here is even when you feel a certain contempt for, say, the passivity or passive-aggressiveness of Brooke, you still like her, and still want her to figure her shit out.

It’s not a book to think too much about, and even giving it this much head — and blog — space is probably granting it more contemplation than it deserves. But as a light, vaguely voyeuristic read, about two pretty people with deep insecurities who find themselves the very definition of the maxim “Be careful what you wish for,” it is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours and not have to think too much about anything.

Except, perhaps, for all the weight issues Weisberger fixates on here. After the fashion industry-based fat shaming in The Devil Wears Prada, it is refreshing to see her address the topic calmly and rationally here, but it is also dwelt upon overmuch and overlong. We get it. Hollywood perpetuates unrealistic beauty standards! Normal women don’t measure up! The book’s weakest parts are when it tries to be topical; its strengths are when it focuses on the intimacies of a marriage and the effects life changing success can have on a couple in crisis.

And now, I have really spent too much time thinking about this book. These kinds of books are cotton candy for the brain. And, as Brooke would doubtless say of cotton candy, best enjoyed in moderation.

SCORECARD

TBR DAY 74: Last Night at Chateau Marmont by Lauren Weisberger 
GENRE: Women’s Fiction
PUBLISHED: 2010
TIME ON THE TBR: ~6 years. 
PURCHASED FROM: Op shop.
KEEP: No, I’ll pass this on.

Published inTBR

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