Customer Reviews

Bitch Goddess

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Robert Rodi is a master of his craft. Interesting style and sharp wit combine to make acid-tripping dogs and bitter back-stabbing actress antics a rollicking success in his latest novel.
I just have to say this books is genius. And, for the die-hard Rodi fan, you MUST check out his new comic-book series, CODENAME: KNOCKOUT which is sinfully delicious.

When I started reading this book, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I guess I was sort of ho-hum about it. It was cute, funny and had a neat style to it, but there didn't seem to be anything special about it. Then, surprisingly, that all changed. Bitch Goddess really started to grow on me. Soon, I found myself reading it for hours just to find out what happened next.

Viola Chute is one memorable character! Author Robert Rodi has created this fabulous life for her, a former B-movie actress who has found a rise in her career through the nighttime soap opera, The Winds of Wyndamville. But there are a few years in Viola's life that are unaccounted for. Where was she between 1979 and 1982? There are no records, articles or interviews claiming a much-needed vacation or a few years spent at a spa retreat. And when anyone brings it up, Viola is the queen of changing the subject.

Mr. Harry is hired by Viola to ghostwrite her biography. While doing so, he becomes intrigued by the missing years and goes in search of the truth. And by this time, readers will be curious, too.

The story is told entirely in interviews, articles, answering machine messages, faxes, e-mails, and tape-recorded conversations between Mr. Harry and Viola. It was very easy to follow along with the style, and I think this aspect of the novel is what made it so much fun to read. This is my first try with a Robert Rodi book, and I'm thinking another one will be in order soon!

I haven't read a book in this format (e-mails, letters, cards etc) since the suspense book THE FAN years ago and it still doesnt work very well. :) It was frustrating at first and it took me a long time to get "into" the book.

I will give this a good review because as I kept reading I became more and more interseted in the escapades of the b movie actress Viola Chute and by the time all the "twists and turns" were revealed I laughed out loud at the resilience of her character. It was delicious satire.

The "Big secret" we keep waiting for ends up to be a real snoozer but I enjoyed the unraveling of the story none the less.

I still think PRINCESS PARAGON is his best book. (And not his most popular either)

If you have not read a Robert Rodi book before I would suggest starting with FAG HAG and PRICESS PARAGON. (I only thought DRAG QUEEN was not worth reading)

Enjoy but don't expect too much from this book.

I've enjoyed all of Robert Rodi's novels, but this one, with its stylish correspondance style was SO MUCH FUN! The humor is intelligent, and it is so well paced that Mr. Rodi actually gives you time to breathe between major laugh-till-you-cry episodes. The parody of a scene from "An Urban Rail Conveyance Named Desire" alone, on just a few pages, is worth the entire price of this book. Congratulations, Mr. Rodi, and could we have more? It was a while between this one and Kept Boy.

What a riot! After a slight gap between books, Rodi is back with a hilarious, spiky Hollywood satire. I've never seen anyone work so nimbly in the epistolary style. His details are perfect, and the characters, as always, are brilliant. If "Absolutely Fabulous" were a book, this would be it.

I was sorry to miss Rodi when he was in New York on his book tour. I hear he put on quite a show. For now I guess I'll just have to settle for rereading some of his other novels.

This is Rodi at his best - creating a strong woman. Viola Chute, the heroine of the novel, is a strong woman, much stronger than men around her. She is the godess of the screen without even being a good actress - she simply knows how to manipulate the world around her and the world is most often all too happy to oblige.
This novel is something of an experiment for Rodi - we don't get a single narration, the reader is forced to build the story up literally from scraps - of letters, press cuttings, chapters in books, notes, memos etc - but this does not make the reading tedious, quite on the contrary it makes the story flow even smoother.
Not necessarily Rodi's best (that is Fag Hag!) but a decent reading so start looking for a copy now. It may not be easy, I warn you!

Someone told me that I should try a Robert Rodi novel because his style is somewhat similar to Terry Southern and Augusten Burroughs, two favorites of mine. I had no idea what to expect. Reluctant, I bought Bitch Goddess and hoped for the best. This is one of the funniest, raunchiest satires I've read in quite a while! Viola Chute was a B-list movie starlet in the sixties and seventies and is now making a big comeback in an Aaron Spelling-type of TV melodrama. She hires a ghostwriter to pen her memoirs, and she tells him all about her life and career with gusto. Her information, however, isn't exactly accurate, so he does his research elsewhere and finds plenty of dirt on her. Viola finds out about this and fires him. Big mistake, for Harry decides to write a rather sleazy unauthorized biography that will either make her all the more famous or end her victorious comeback altogether.

I haven't laughed so much while reading a novel in a long time. Rodi has quite a unique voice and awesome attention to ironic humor. I like the gossip surrounding Viola, especially the one in which she attacks a paparazzo. I also like how she makes her agent negotiate her contract and the plot of a new project that sounds like an even trashier version of Melrose Place and Dynasty. The article from "Guilty Pleasures" about a movie where she played Joan of Arc is the most hilarious one of all. The novel's format is interesting. The story is told through a series of interviews, articles, letters, e-mails, phone messages and so on. It is a tricky format, but one that makes the novel all the more interesting. Bitch Goddess is a wonderful satire. The raunchy aspects do remind me of a Southern or Burroughs novel, but the author also reminds me of Matthew Beaumont and Wendy Holden. Are you in the bargain for a darkly funny novel? I suggest you give Bitch Goddess a whirl. I will definitely read the other books by Rodi.

There's been a heat wave of tropical proportions in my town and it's been tough just stringing two thoughts together, which is probably why the "summer reading" genre has been so-called. I doubt if Rodi falls into this catagory but during overheated times like these, I've reached for a Rodi book to kickstart the cure by laughter and have never been disappointed by the crazy, wild, fastpaced and delightful worlds he creates. He says things other people only think and tell themselves to surpress. His characters are bigger than life, even though they're disguised as the people next door. His stories are usually adorable and effective and the laugh-a-page quota has always exceeded expectations. Even his titles are remarkable. Who can forget titles like FAG HAG, DRAG QUEEN, CLOSET CASE or KEPT BOY?

Alas and alack, not so with BITCH GODDESS. I don't know what happened, but this pill is a placebo and doesn't work the cooldown cure. Rodi strings together a series of interviews, emails, memos, answering machine messages, scripts, newspaper and magazine articles to tell the story of Viola Chute, cult movie actress turned recent TV star (à la Joan Collins, it looks like) and her ghost writer. It's difficult to tell whether we are meant to admire Viola or dispise her but certainly just about everybody in the book can't stand her. As depicted by Rodi she's not all that bad. It's the things that people say about her that are awful and perhaps that's the point. Rodi reaches a little too far for shock value and there are some not-so-funny or effective references using scatological humor that miss the mark. Rodi seemed to have found his pace near the end of the book and I got a couple of laughs-a-page but not enough to justify reading this. I hate to slam a book but this one's a clunker. Heigh-ho or sigh: take your pick.

i could not get past the first 30 pages or so. i found it dull and the way that it flips back and forth between formats is distracting. i found it to be boring. i would not recommend this book.

Robert Rodi weaves his tale in a novel, clever sort of way, stitching his story together with nothing but correspondences: e-mails, answering machine messages, letters, affidavits, whatever. Although it's a little hard to get into for the first 2 chapters or so, this method slowly but surely grows on you. The interesting bits really only come towards the middle of the book, but Rodi's style is snappy and interesting enough to keep your interest till then. It gets saccharine-sweet towards the very end, and the big climax isn't really *that* big after all, but you can almost forgive that, since the rest of the book is actually pretty decent.